


leaning out for love

by meminisse



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Golden Trio, Hawkbeej Divorce Attorney AU based on that one text post, M/M, Margaret IS a lesbian YES I am projecting, discussions of alcoholism, rewatched bottoms up and was devastated by the lack of houlifield content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:20:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26647411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meminisse/pseuds/meminisse
Summary: "Are you married?" It's a standard question for a nurse, but it's been a long day, and it takes more effort than usual not to roll her eyes."Yes, Corporal.""Oh. You wanna get divorced?"_____Margaret's been in love with Helen for about five years now and telling herself that it'll pass. But it's a lot harder to tell herself to ignore it when she's about to get divorced. Maybe she doesn't want to anymore.Or, the Hawkbeej married divorce attorney AU. Schemes and pining abound.
Relationships: B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan & Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan/Helen Whitfield
Comments: 71
Kudos: 115





	1. Prologue: October 1952.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from "Suzanne" by the inimitable Leonard Cohen but I listened to the Nina Simone cover which is a different vibe but still so good. Credit to aunt-hawkeye on Tumblr for the text post that started this whole thing, and to gayfranzkafka and horaetio for starting the Houlifield movement. 
> 
> For background: Hawkeye and BJ are lawyers (in New York and San Francisco respectively) drafted into the US Army around 1951, quickly become friends, and make something of a name for themselves by helping various army personnel with divorces and other assorted legal trouble. Everyone else at the 4077 is pretty much the same. After the war, BJ gets divorced and goes to Maine and has a dramatic proposal yada yada yada and they end up in San Francisco as newly minted divorce lawyers, which lends itself to Schemes because divorce law in the 50s was fucking weird.

Margaret knows as soon as she walks into post-op that it's going to be a long night. The soldier in the corner's curled his knees up onto his chair and folded his arms on top, maybe so that nobody would notice him keeping watch over his sleeping friend— a chest case, from the bandages, big and blond. She thinks his name begins with an H.

She sighs and walks down the aisle, mentally preparing herself for a long argument. As she gets closer, she can see corporal's stripes on the sitting man's fatigues under a thin layer of dirt, but his shock of dark hair is inexplicably clean. His head is propped against the wall, and his mouth slightly open. When she shakes his shoulder gently, he starts and looks directly at her. His eyes are bright blue and bloodshot; at a guess she would have said he'd been awake for at least thirty hours.

"Are you married?" It's a standard question for a nurse, but it's been a long day, and it takes more effort than usual not to roll her eyes.

"Yes, Corporal."

"Oh. You wanna get divorced?"

"Corporal, I suggest you watch your mouth." She moves to take his arm and haul him out of the chair, but he dodges.

"I swear I'm not coming on to you or anything, okay? I know the uniform can be deceiving but I'm really a lawyer. My best friend, BJ Hunnicutt, he's a lawyer too, a good one. He can get you any divorce, any time, any place, you name it, he can get you out of it. He's got a very smooth tongue and I think if he shaved he'd have very smooth cheeks." As he rambles on, Margaret manages to haul him upright. He's much taller than she'd expected from seeing him curled up.

He blinks down at her blearily. When he speaks, his breath smells like alcohol and coffee."You know I keep falling in love with people with blond hair and blue eyes?" Margaret really does roll her eyes this time. She doesn't respond as she drags him down the aisle and deposits him on an empty bed.

"Hey, hey, where are we going? I can't leave him alone."

"You need to rest."

"But I can't, don't you understand? BJ got shot by some idiot on our side who didn't know that you shouldn't play with guns when everyone else is playing for keeps! If I don't watch him nobody will, and if anything happens it'll be all my fault." He tries to rise again, but she pushes him down.

"You can't take care of him if you don't have any strength of your own," she retorts, not unkindly. It isn't the first time she'd had to deal with a scared friend. The faces are different but the script is the same. "Sleep for a little while. He'll still be here when you wake up, I promise." He considers this.

"Okay," he says at last, and lies down. She can see that his hair is shot through with gray now, yet he sounds very young when he mumbles, "Wake me up if anything happens, okay?"

"Alright. Sleep now, Corporal."

He turns over so he's facing his friend on the other side of the ward. Margaret heads back to her desk, and maybe her ears are playing tricks on her, but she swears she can hear someone sing: _there's a somebody I'm longing to see, I hope that he turns out to be… someone to watch over me…_ When she turns around to check, the corporal is snoring softly.

*******

She falls asleep at her desk near the end of her shift.

She's back in the bedroom she had when she was seventeen, the one with an oak tree outside a big bay window that lets the morning light in. It's the best of all the rooms she's ever had. It's the eleventh time she's had this dream. She wants to turn her head and see who's in bed with her. She wonders if it's Donald, although it hasn't been him for the last three weeks.

At some point she started standing at the kitchen sink with Helen, walking three gigantic Saint Bernards with Helen, lying on a sofa as Helen pressed her sore calves, sitting on the floor as Helen brushed her hair out. It didn't scare her the first few times it happened. They're together for most of the day; it had seemed only natural that Helen should appear in her dreams. It was all innocent enough. Her brain was just confused.

No, there was no problem until her stupid, mutinous brain decided to wake up next to Helen. She doesn't know when it happened first, because she can't write about it in her diary, only that she awaits the dream with an equal mixture of fear and desperate hope.

Margaret turns her head. It's Helen, just as it's been the last five times. Terror. Exhilaration. Absolute peace.

The sunlight filtering through the gap in the curtains is the same as always and so is the bedroom, and so is Helen's smile as she whispers _good morning, Margaret._ Then Helen leans across the pillow and kisses her for a moment, which feels like both a year and a millisecond. It's deep and dirty and it feels like dream-Helen meant it, which is already bad, and then dream-Margaret kisses her back and she must have meant it too because she feels very calm, and happier than she's been in a long time. And then dream-Helen rolls half on top of dream-Margaret and reaches a hand between her legs, which is when real-Margaret wakes up sweating.

The clock above her head reads 5:57 in the morning— she's been out for just under an hour. Someone is talking quietly at the other end of the room.

The corporal is awake and back in his chair, telling a story to his friend. The blond man is clamping his hand over his stomach and suppressing his laughter as the tired corporal waves his hands around. Margaret should tell them to shut up, but the dream has left her rattled and oddly sad. She tells herself _grow up, dreams are just dreams._ (She doesn't believe herself.) Leans back in her chair, scrubs her eyes, gets back to her charts. It'll pass.


	2. April 1956

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> April 1956. Alternate title: The beagle, the divorce, and Pierce and Hunnicutt (or is it Hunnicutt and Pierce?), Attorneys at Law.

The fog rolls through San Francisco as she walks down the street and tries not to think. She's wearing her nurse's uniform even though she's taken the day off from work. Helen gave her a funny look when she saw her, but mercifully didn't ask any questions. Margaret's not sure if she could have explained why it brings her so much comfort— it's something left of the army in her, this longing to be the same as everyone else. She hasn't been a major for three years now. The thought of all that time passing makes her feel exhausted and old.

She didn't sleep well the night before. Between the thought of Helen sleeping in the next room; twelve hypothetical disastrous outcomes of her meeting with the divorce lawyers in the morning; a nightmare involving Frank Burns' chin; and the realization that in just a few months, she might be done with Donald Penobscot and his snotty mother-in-law forever, she spent most of the night feeling like there was static crackling in her veins. It's a miracle she's upright at all. Then again, she spent three years operating in Korea, so maybe it shouldn't surprise her.

She thinks of the way Helen made her drink some tea before leaving the apartment— two days and she's starting to think of it as _the_ apartment, as though there's only one in the world— and how she had hugged her in the kitchen and said "Go get 'em, Major."

Margaret had closed her eyes and breathed Helen in: citrus shampoo, mint tea, laundry detergent. Her chest hurt when she pulled away.

This line of thought is getting dangerous. She needs to think of something else, pay attention to the street signs. Instead of referring her to the address on the business card she's clutching, her mind helpfully reminds her what Donald's face looked like when she left their house for good.

Suddenly she wants a drink. She's about to turn around and retreat to Helen's apartment, or the welcoming arms of the nearest bar, but Helen's apartment hasn't had any liquor in it for three years, and a bar wouldn't have Helen. Besides, drinking at 10 in the morning has never been her style. It hits her that while she's been fantasizing, her feet have taken her to Taylor Street and walked her right past the building.

As she stands in front of the door, her nerves from the night before return in full splendor. Going inside will make it real. There will be no going back. The thought makes her hesitate— but it passes, and she's just angry again.

_You were a major in the United States Army. You have seen more blood and gore on your shoes than most people could ever see in their nightmares. You've been shelled in a cave with only a Bostonian trust-fund brat for company. You are the only child of Howitzer Al Houlihan, and by God, you are going to see a lawyer._

Margaret storms through the door and stomps up the stairs.

At the top of the landing, a dark-haired man in a slightly wrinkled gray suit is trying to unlock a glass case, inside which is a board reading HUNNICUTT AND PIERCE ATTORNEYS AT LAW. At first, each word appears to be painted in gold on its own wooden tile, sort of like a church signboard. As she gets closer, she realizes the only movable words are PIERCE and HUNNICUTT.

"Just one second, I'll be right with you," the man says. He struggles with the key for another few seconds before it finally gives with a loud click and a triumphant "Aha!" Margaret watches him in baffled silence as he reaches into the case and rearranges the tiles so that the sign now reads PIERCE AND HUNNICUTT. As he lowers the glass front, he turns to look her up and down.

"Huh. You know, pardon my saying so, but you don't really look like the kind of man to be accused of being a communist. I mean, I really think that the nurse's outfit would be a McCarthyist's first priority." He waggles his eyebrows and grins.

She sputters,"Excuse me?"

The man steps towards her. "Aren't you here for the free legal consultation? Friday—" he checks his watch. "At ten?"

She doesn't know whether to hit him for being impudent or to laugh hysterically, so she settles for saying, "It's— it's Thursday."

He smacks himself on the forehead. "Ah, that's right. Then you must be Margaret Houlihan. I'm Hawkeye Pierce, at your service, also known as Kid Flash, quickest litigator in the West. If you'll come inside, my sidekick's out of the office at the moment, but he should be back shortly and then we'll get started."

The office is larger than it seemed from the outside. He leads her through the main room, which smelled strongly of coffee and furniture polish— as far as she can tell, it contains only a long table, a few chairs, a few bookshelves, and some plants in brightly colored pots.

"You'll have to excuse my earlier mistake; most people don't know that you actually don't need to know the days of the week to pass the California bar exam. I can, however, recite the names of all the U.S. presidents forwards, backwards, inside out, and diagonally." Something about the way he talks sounds familiar, but she can't place it. "Please, sit. Actually, don't sit on that one, I think the leg is wobbly. I'll get another one." He sweeps back out before she even has a chance to process what he said, leaving her standing in the middle of the floor.

Hawkeye Pierce's office is clearly lived-in. His desk is covered in enough papers to drown a small army; what little space isn't buried is filled by a bright red vase filled with pens and pencils, and a framed photograph of five people on a beach: two men, two women, and a child. There's also a tray of business cards reading PIERCE AND HUNNICUTT… Margaret takes one just to give her hands something to do. Scanning the room, she sees at least three dirty coffee mugs strewn around a dented percolator.

Yet the office appears to be occupied by two people. Two framed diplomas hang on the wall: one from Berkeley Law, and one from Columbia. Two hats hang on the coat-stand by the door. It's possible that even the lone desk is in fact supporting paper for two.

He returns with an identical chair, and they sit, only Hawkeye lounges with one ankle crossed over his knee, and Margaret sits ramrod straight on the edge of her chair.

"May I ask you how you heard about us?"

"Another surgical nurse I work with recommended you— Sheila Anderson?"

He smiles dreamily. "Ah, Sheila." He looks like he's about to make an objectifying comment, but instead he sighs, "What a lady. That was a great case. Did I ever laugh when I saw her ex-husband's face after he got convicted." Margaret decides she isn't going to encourage him by asking him to elaborate.

"I'm sure. May I ask _you_ why the signboard?"

"Oh, that." Hawkeye— which is an objectively stupid name for a grown man— waves a hand dismissively, like this is all very normal."A little housewarming gift from my in-laws. I told them we wanted fine china, or a silver tea set, but you know how in-laws are. They always think they know best." He looks at her expectantly, maybe waiting for a laugh, or another question, or an explosion of irritation. On another day, she thinks she might have indulged him; today, she's too exhausted to do anything but give him a flat look.

Instead of asking her _what's the matter with you, can't you take a joke,_ he sighs. Maybe he's used to this kind of behavior from women about to turn their lives upside-down."Well, my partner and I couldn't decide whose name should be first— he's very competitive, you know— so in the name of peace, love, and equality, we got a signboard so we could flip the names around. On odd days of the month, his name goes first, which means that he gets seven extra days by the end of the year. But I'm only doing it for the money, so I don't really mind. My real speciality is criminal defense, but these days it's mostly just legal advising, pro bono stuff. Really, I do that stuff out of love for my fellow man, and I do this out of love for a fellow who happens to be a man but is commonly mistaken for Bigfoot.”

Margaret decides that maybe this strange, skinny man is part of a dream, because there's no way someone so weird could have made it through law school. But then again, she spent most of her adult life being outranked by idiots and nutcases in the army. "I see," she lies. "So, uh, how did you get started in the divorce busi—"

The door creaks behind her and she turns to see who it is: a tall, blond man in a navy-blue suit, carrying a precarious stack of clean mugs in one hand and dragging a chair behind him with the other. He's handsome, she supposes, if you like that sort of thing, and incidentally bears no resemblance to Bigfoot.

Hawkeye lights up. "Ah, the sasquatch of the hour! Now we can get started."

The blond man does not appear to be fazed by Hawkeye calling him a sasquatch in front of a new client. "I'm coming, keep your pants on." He walks around to where Hawkeye is sitting and gingerly deposits the stack of mugs (six? seven? how did he fit them all in his hands?) on the table behind him.

Margaret frowns. "Don't people normally have just one lawyer?"

"Yeah, but he feels left out if we don't let him do something. You know how kids are," says Hawkeye.

"Give me a quarter and I'll go away," says the blond man, without missing a beat. He reaches across the desk to shake Margaret's hand and gives her a hundred-watt smile. "BJ Hunnicutt. Nice to meet you, Ms. Houlihan. Would you like some coffee?" He has a nice smile, and he seems like the most normal part of the last two days so far, so she says yes to the coffee and tells him to call her Margaret.

"Have you been in San Francisco long?" he asks as he pours her drink.

"About three years, since the war was over." A pause.Neither of them seems to be rushing to fill it. She wracks her brain for something to ask them. "Sheila tells me you two met in the army?"

BJ nods. “Yep. We actually got a start in divorce law during the war. First it was one guy in our platoon with a Dear John letter— we played poker with him, figured we could help him out. Then he recommended us to another guy, a lieutenant whose wife wanted a divorce. After we kept him from having to send his whole salary back for alimony, word got around pretty quick.” 

“And unfortunately, the war kept us in business,” Hawkeye adds, slouching back in his chair. He seems angrier about this than she would have expected for someone with a thriving practice. 

"It's the only thing we could ever thank our draft board for," says BJ, smiling and sipping his coffee. He says it like a joke, but Margaret knows it really isn't. "So tell me a little about your financial situation."

They suddenly become serious professionals as they discuss retainers and hourly fees. When Margaret admits that she doesn't know when she'll be able to pay them, BJ just nods. They ask her what she wants to keep, and she doesn't really know so she says the first thing that pops into her head: "I've been jumping around all my life and I'm tired. I want to get my own place somewhere with my own money, and I don't want to leave the city unless I have to." As soon as she says it, she knows that it's true.

As Hawkeye and BJ discuss out-of-court settlements and the new family court set-up, they finish each other's ideas, tack on new clauses, toss off jokes at breakneck speed, throw in some terrible puns (BJ), roll their eyes (Hawkeye: "Please ignore him, he's suffering from delusions of humor."), and come back together in time for the end of the sentence. The effect is slightly disorienting. She feels almost like an outsider in a conversation that's supposed to be directed at her.

"Do you have any questions so far?"

"No, I think I'm fine so far." Margaret is not fine. She feels like she's about to throw up. _Am I really here, in this office, having these thoughts? Is this a nightmare? Am I really throwing away certain stability for a possible happiness? Who's to say that I'll really be better off like this?_ She glances down at the card she's still clutching in her hand and frowns.“Your cards are different,” she blurts. “I mean, the one that Sheila— Sheila Anderson— gave me says Hunnicutt and Pierce, but this one says Pierce and Hunnicutt.” She fumbles in her handbag, trying to squish the rising panic by giving her hands something to do. When she finds the card, she passes it over to BJ. Hawkeye immediately leans into his side in order to read it, although it's only his own phone number and office address and he must know them by heart. 

“Ha,” says BJ, with a pleased little smile. “I knew she liked me better.” 

Hawkeye draws back and sputters. “Wh— That’s an unfounded opinion!” 

“She gave my card to a client! That shows that she had _mine_ on hand before yours!” It was as though they had forgotten she was there. 

“Oh, really? How do you know she doesn't keep _mine_ tucked under her pillow, and she gave _yours_ away to someone else?”

“Are you two finished?” They stop and turn back to her. BJ at least has the grace to look sheepish about his appalling lack of manners. 

“Oh, yeah,” says Hawkeye, as though his squabble with BJ never happened. “Well, we each have our own set. Mine has my name first, and an educated woman like yourself can guess the rest.” 

Maybe she's just tired and cranky, but something in her bristles at this. Hawkeye Pierce is not the first man to treat her education as a punchline, only the most recent. Maybe he meant it as a joke, and maybe she's overreacting out of habit. But her father always said it's always better to show people early who you are and what you expect. _Then they can't say you never warned them._

“Don’t make fun of me,” she snaps. “There are about a hundred other people with your qualifications in the city of San Francisco. If you’re going to be a sexist pig, I’m sure I can find one of them to take my case.” 

Hawkeye blinks at her. And then, to her surprise, he backs down almost immediately. "Alright, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that, really. I was just… joking around, you know. I take it back."He looks contrite enough that she relents a little.

She sniffs. "You're not as funny as you think you are."

BJ smiles and Hawkeye sighs. "You hecklers are really relentless. Look, I really am sorry. I've got a chronic condition. It's called foot-in-mouth syndrome."

Margaret smirks in spite of herself. "I'm familiar."

That seems to be all the encouragement he needs to keep talking, because he leans forward and says: "So tell us. Where did it begin?" It isn't the sort of question she'd expected a divorce attorney, even a potentially insane one, to ask. It strikes her as unprofessional somehow, no legal jargon or carefully worded dancing around the issue. 

*******

Margaret was prepared to admit that maybe the beagle had been a mistake. 

Donald had been gone for three weeks on business at Fort Dix (again). They'd fought before he left (again). This time it was about why Margaret didn't want to stop being a nurse in order to carry on the Penobscot line. She had tried to tell him that it wasn't that she didn't like children or that she was incapable of doing so; she had taken care of more than a few who passed through the 4077 during the war and liked them very much. It was just that she didn't want to give up a career 15 years in the making in order to have a baby that she was going to be raising by herself. Donald didn't like that answer, of course.

Well. The house was empty. She was lonely. Maybe the fight with Donald had made her aware of her loneliness, the way it lived inside her. She was beginning to wonder if Donald was right that a child would be good for her. Either way, she didn't feel like going home, so she had gone for a walk after work, head spinning with thoughts of babies; bassinets; how to make someone stay with you forever; whether Donald was the kind of person who would do homework with his kid; whether it was worth giving up her life, what she had always thought of as her _real_ life, for the possibility of future love; whether any love was worth that kind of change; and did babies really make women less lonely or would a child inherit whatever loneliness was inside her? 

And then she'd remembered Helen saying something about that Sheila Anderson's dog having puppies that were ready to adopt, and didn't Sheila live just another two blocks away? Her brain had promptly shut down any further thoughts of Donald, and had only come back to itself when she found herself staring down into a cloth-lined basket, absently scratching the mother behind her ears as the puppies vied for her attention. One with a star-shaped splash of white on its muzzle tried to lick her hand. 

_Donald will have a fit,_ said a little voice in the back of her head. _You know he's scared of dogs. He'll burst a vein if you bring one home. You'd better turn around and go right home if you want him to love you and stay with you forever._ The puppy with the white muzzle braced its forepaws on the rim of the basket and shoved its nose into her fingertips to be petted.

Margaret told the little voice to shut up and suck a combat boot.

“Helen said you might stop by.”

“She did?”

Sheila gave her a little smile, the one that made everyone on their floor fall in love with her, and leaned against the doorframe. Her hair glinted brass in the evening light. “Uh-huh. I think her exact words were, ‘I asked and Margaret said she doesn’t want a dog at the moment, which means you should expect her any day now.’ Something along those lines.”

Margaret snorted. “She’s such a know-it-all.” 

Sheila laughed softly. “Maybe she knows you better than you think she does." Margaret turned— _she can see it, you're giving it all away—_ but Sheila only smiled and changed the subject. She wondered if Sheila knew what Helen was to her. If she cared. If things would be easier if she had met Sheila all those years ago, all dark eyes and dry wit and responsible motherhood.

"Any ideas for a name?"

She spoke before thinking: "I'll call him Oliver."

"Any reason?"

"My first boyfriend. I had the biggest crush on him in seventh grade. We went steady— for about three weeks, when I found out that he really liked Beth Benning instead. He ended up being a real rat, but I always liked the name." Sheila laughs again.

"As good a name as any."

*******

"And then..." BJ prompts.

"Donald came back a week later, and of course he wasn't happy about the dog. Barking, urinating in the house, chewing the shoes that he left out which I told him to put away… But we didn't really get into it, because he said the army was talking about reassigning him to Fort Dix permanently, which of course was more pressing." BJ nods. "We fought, but I said I'd come with him in the end. I wasn't happy, but... "

"You wanted to make it work," Hawkeye prompts. Margaret can't tell if he's really sympathetic or if he's just trying to construct an argument.

"Yes. Everything was fine, for a while." _At least between you and Donald_ , her traitorous brain supplies. Maybe she should get a lobotomy.  
"He was happy I wanted to come with him, and I was happy that he wanted me to come. I felt… wanted, I suppose. And I hadn't… I mean, not since just after we moved to San Francisco…" She trails off. She remembers it and wishes she didn't: fog lifting and sun shining, getting out of the Packard and looking at their little blue house, suitcase by her feet and Donald by her side, head and chest full of dreams that could come true at any moment. Thinking, _I could be happy here._

It hadn't lasted, but the memory is still good.

"Well. Anyway. Two days ago, he came home and started making a fuss about Oliver. It escalated pretty quickly." A strange kind of laugh forces its way out of her mouth. "I asked him why this was suddenly a problem, after he'd been home nearly two weeks without so much as a word about the dog, and he said that he'd just gotten his assignment to Fort Dix and that there was no way we were going to be able to take a three-month old beagle with us across the country. He stood there, looking like he was about to burst an artery, and I stood there looking at him, and all of a sudden-- I mean, I didn't even know I was going to say it-- I just said, 'Donald, I want a divorce.' And that was it. I knew it was true as soon as it hit the air."

Hawkeye frowns and leans forward. "What do you mean, that was it?"

"That was it," she repeats. "That's what broke my marriage. It was all my fault because I went and got a stupid dog, and I couldn't bear to leave him behind because he made me happy." Mortifyingly, her voice falters on the last word. She swallows hard and reminds herself that crying in front of lawyers, even potentially insane and/or sexist divorce attorneys, is conduct absolutely unbefitting of a former major in the U.S. Army and a current head nurse.

BJ gives her his handkerchief. Margaret is deeply grateful to whatever higher power might exist that neither of them moves to offer her any physical comfort, because then she really would cry, and getting snot on their shirts would just be unprofessional.

At last, BJ murmurs,"So you'd been fighting for a long time."

She nods. "Since he was reassigned to San Francisco while I was still in Korea, during the war."

"He left for the States without you?" Hawkeye sounds genuinely indignant on her behalf. She thinks it must be exhausting to care so much about everyone who comes through this office.

"Well—" she starts to defend him out of habit, then realizes the absurdity of excusing her rat husband's many failings to a pair of divorce attorneys. "Well, yes. Before that, he'd been in Tokyo, and then at least I could go and see him on leave. But for the last year of the war, I was on my own there. At least until I met Helen— we worked together for a few months, until…" She falters. "Until she got sent home. Anyway, she's the friend I'm staying with now." Hawkeye looks at her, hard, but doesn't say anything. There's no way that he can know the rest of the story, or that she's leaving anything out. She feels that maybe he does anyway.

BJ leans forward; he doesn't appear to have noticed anything. "When this, ah, Donald—" he pronounces the name with faint distaste. She likes him immensely. "—when he went back to the States, was that his choice?"

"Yes. Because he's a disgusting slimeball."

"Can't argue with that. Were you sending all your money back to him at the time?" She nods.

They look at each other.

"Precedent for abandonment?" says Hawkeye.

"Could be. But they stayed together after, and that's condoning."

"Damn. Margaret, did your slimeball husband have an affair?"

"No. He wouldn't."

Hawkeye raises his eyebrows. "How do you know?"

"Because I'm a better shot than him." That shuts him up pretty quickly. Margaret spends the next fifteen minutes shooting down the ideas of using imprisonment for a felony, extreme cruelty, and drug addiction as grounds for divorce.

When they've exhausted all their original ideas, they sit for a few seconds in silence before BJ suddenly sits up. "Margaret? When is Penobsnot—" She gives him a look. "Uh, I mean, Penob- _scot_ supposed to leave for Purgatory?"

She snorts at that. "He leaves for New Jersey in two months."

"Hmm." He leans back in his chair and Hawkeye sits up.

"What, what?"

"I don't know. We might be able to do something with that." He chews a toothpick meditatively. (Margaret doesn't know where he got the toothpick from.)

She's about to make her excuses about having somewhere else to be, but instead what comes out is: "Can I ask you a question?"

"You just technically did," says Hawkeye smugly.

She rolls her eyes. "Alright, another question. Why together?"

BJ grins and shrugs. “Why fix it if it ain’t broke?” 

Hawkeye claps BJ’s shoulder as he rises to refill his coffee. “See, we dissolve enough unions every day that we figured it would have been a little ridiculous to dissolve ours. I mean, BJ’s already been divorced once; a second time would make people start talking.”

BJ gives him a look that Margaret can’t quite read, somewhere between amused affection and exasperation. “What he means is that we work well together, better than we would alone. It wouldn't be any fun with someone else. Besides, he makes good coffee.”

Hawkeye smiles at him, eyes crinkling at the corners, and touches his shoulder again as he sits down, just as someone knocks at the door of the front office. He jumps up to answer it.

"Beej, it's Adam!" he yells from the front room. "The, uh, the coleslaw guy!"

BJ leaps up, scattering bits of paper all over the floor. "Damn, that's my cue. Listen, we'll draw up the papers and have them sent over to you, alright? Here, I'll show you out." He ushers her through the main room, past where Hawkeye is murmuring something to a man with unfortunately ugly facial hair. He does not appear to be hiding any coleslaw under his trench coat, but he tips his hat at her as she leaves, which counts for something.

She's almost out the door when BJ says, "Margaret?"

She turns around. He looks very serious when he says, "I think you already know this, but it's going to be alright."

Margaret doesn't trust herself to speak: either she'll start crying, or hysterically laughing, or propose a spring wedding just because he's there and she wishes Donald could have been more like this man who she's known for an hour and a half. So she nods, and BJ smiles back at her before closing the door. She thinks he understands what she means.

*******

It's starting to rain outside. She's just kicked her shoes off and is scratching Oliver behind the ears when the phone rings. It's Helen. "Margaret?" She sounds slightly breathless, as though she's shoved a few people out of the way to get to the phone.

"Helen? What's the matter?"

"Just calling to hear your dulcet tones, darling. How'd your meeting go?" She promises herself not to analyze this sentence. _Act normal._

"Well, I don't know if I want them to represent me in court... I think one of them might be crazy and the other one is handsome but has no objection to insanity, which means he condones it. So I'm still going to see that guy Hallan tomorrow."

"You don't mind crazy."

"I never said that."

"Well, do you or don't you?" Margaret can hear her smirking.

"Oh, stuff it, Whitfield. It's been a long day."

"Oh yeah? You know, we— hang on." There's a beat before Helen sighs. "Listen, Dr. Cianciolo needs the phone. But you have to promise to tell me all about it when I get home." She says _home_ like Margaret belongs there, like it could be a real life.

Margaret feels something rise up in her like a tidal wave, it grows and grows and it's about to burst out of her mouth; it's spilling out of her and now it's in the air; the words are close enough that she could reach out and touch them. If she leans out. Maybe she could.

"Alright. I lo—" She almost says it. But she's not that stupid. She stops. Clears her throat. Tries again. "I'm looking forward to it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank god the hardest bit is over: now we can get to schemes and love. Next chapter (with way more Helen, I swear) should be up in the next 7-10 business days. Chapter count has increased because I may have misjudged the length of a few chapters (oops but not really). Thank you all so much for reading and for your lovely comments! Any and all feedback/questions about divorce law in the 1950s/suggestions for lawyer jokes would be very welcome.


	3. May 1956

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May 1956. Alternate title: Cardboard boxes, a helpful ex-boyfriend, and the pain of being close to something you want.

_"_ I'd better get going. You know how Donald will whine and moan that I never spend time with him. Honestly, he's really as bad as Frank Burns sometimes." Margaret turned to look at Helen, expecting her to laugh and make a joke about old Ferret Face. But Helen was watching her, not smiling, one eyebrow raised.

"Like Frank? Is that how you see him?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I mean that isn't the way you would talk about a husband you really loved and were happy with."

Something roiled in her stomach."And what would you know about it?" 

She had hit a nerve: Helen's face went hurt, then angry, then totally blank. Her voice was dry, almost amused, when she said, "Do I need to have been married to know what it looks like from the outside?"

Margaret felt her anger crash over her like a wave. "For your information, Donald and I _do_ love each other, even if it isn't exactly conventional, and either way my relationship with my husband is none of your damn business!" She was shouting now. "You've got no right to tell me how I do or don't feel, none at all. Sure, Donald and I fight now and again, but that doesn't mean we don't care about each other, that's just part of being married; it's sticking together even when your hours are long and you're always tired and things aren't as perfect as they used to be."

"Oh, you mean like it was during the war?" Silence.

"Goddamn you, Helen Whitfield." It came out as nearly a whisper.

Helen sighed. Stepped towards her, hands raised. "Look, Margaret, I'm not going to lie to you—"

"Then don't say anything at all!" Margaret grabbed her coat and ran out the door before she could do anything she might regret; ran out into the night and somehow back to the house that still felt empty; burning up with anger inside, because what did Helen mean, that she wasn't going to lie? What had she been lying about? Where the hell did she get off talking to her like that— as though Margaret hadn't been happy for Helen no matter who she ended up with, even if she always wished that it was her instead of the other person? And what was the matter with her, that Helen's opinion still mattered after all this time?

Then she'd walked in the house and Donald had said _great news, honey, they're thinking of reassigning us to Fort Dix and there might be a promotion in it for me,_ with that tentative look on his face like maybe he was bracing himself for a fight, and she'd given it to him, but in the end she'd said _fuck it let's try, let's try again_. _I want to try_. Because what did Helen know about it anyway?

Three hours later in the bathtub, she'd been fantasizing about running back to Helen's apartment and saying, _See? See? I love Donald enough that I would give up my job and move across the country._

The thought had come unbidden: _And I loved you enough to put my career on the line too. I would do it again if I had to. I would still do it now. If I had to, I would—_

*******

Helen knocks on the door. "Hey, Houlihan, you fall in or what?"

Margaret starts and turns the water off. "I'm coming! Hold your horses." She's been living in Helen's apartment for the last three weeks. They haven't talked about the fight. The closest they've come was the night Margaret showed up at Helen's door after two weeks of avoiding each other, and said, "Can I come inside?" Helen had taken one look at her(a single bulging suitcase, Oliver in tow behind her, still in her work clothes) and let her inside without asking for an explanation.

Helen had just hugged her quickly and said, "You're just in time. Drop your stuff in the guest room and come have something to eat."

It's been a month and Margaret is getting sick of the not-talking-about-it. Instead, she goes to work. Yells at the new residents with no sense of discipline. Takes care of people. Comes home and talks to Helen about literally anything other than the fight (lawyers, meetings, jobs, dog food, visiting colonels, whether or not it would be stupid to send a letter to Donald's mother detailing everything that's wrong with her). She takes Oliver on long walks through the city. Obsesses over what Donald might be doing. Overanalyzes everything that Helen does and says until she gets so antsy that she needs to walk the dog again.

She consults other lawyers, but doesn't like any of them. One's a jackass, one ogles her, another bears an unfortunate resemblance to a flounder in a bespoke suit. A fourth stammers and gets defensive when she questions his methods. If she has to pick one, she'll take the two lunatics.

"Margaret, you really had me worried there," says Hawkeye happily when she finally comes back to their office. "I thought maybe that dead fish Hallan had fooled you with his nice outfits."

"What's wrong with him?" she asks, more to see what Hawkeye will say than to defend him.

"What's _wrong_ with him? Listen, if lawyers were animals, he'd be a naked mole rat."

BJ jumps in: "If lawyers were plants, he'd be poison oak."

"If lawyers were smells, he'd be unwashed army skivvies."

"If lawyers were inventive practical jokes, he'd be a joy buzz—"

"Alright, I get the picture."

The papers have been served and all there's left to do is wait for them to come up with a plan. All this waiting is making her crack. Living so close to Helen was hard enough even with the constant stresses of war and her marriage. Now, with nothing to distract her, everything seems to set her on fire. It's all little things: they eat breakfast together; Helen drinks tea on weekends and takes her toast almost burnt. They leave for work about ten minutes apart, and Margaret gets home half an hour later. Helen takes ten-minute showers when she gets home from work, and still has the same set of curlers she's owned since Margaret met her in Fort Benning. Sometimes they play cards after dinner, but even better is when they get home and eat in time to settle down and watch the news at seven, because Helen will make fun of the news anchors all through the commercial breaks, and her Virginia accent gets stronger when she's worked up about politics. On Saturdays they go for long, aimless walks through the city; at night they go out for dinner and dance without a drop of alcohol to make them brave, and return home alone but together. And every night, without fail, they wish each other goodnight. Every night, Margaret lays awake trying to sense Helen through the wall, wondering if she's thinking about her, if she notices all the little things that Margaret does too. If all this is making her crazy too.

She is close enough to the life she's been dreaming of for the last five years that she can touch it. So something's got to change before she can say anything stupid.

She decides to ask Hawkeye and BJ if they know of any apartments for rent, which might not be part of their job description, but then again, she's pretty sure the "coleslaw guy" actually supplies them with hard drugs to plant on cheating spouses, so they really can't make excuses. She's about to dial their number when the phone rings.

"Hello?"

"Margaret, is that you?"

"BJ! Hi! I was just about to call you and ask—"

"Listen, can you come down to the office? I think we've figured out how to get a clean case for abandonment, only we need another person tohelp us sort through all the paper."

"Paper? What— why do I even bother? Never mind. I'll be there in twenty minutes."

Hawkeye opens the door, tie (bright blue, printed with little sailboats) loosened and sleeves rolled up. Behind him, BJ is carrying a second phone into the office but keeps tripping over the wires. "Margaret! My second-favorite woman!"

She doesn't dignify this with an eyeroll, just muscles past Hawkeye and picks up the cord before BJ can fall and break his jaw. "Tell me the plan, you germ." She won't admit it, but she's excited. She feels a part of something bigger than her little world for the first time in years.

Hawkeye sighs and follows them into the office. "Killjoy. Well, to make a long story short, we're going to try and get your soon-to-be-a-distant-memory husband reassigned to Fort Dix at the end of this week."

"But he's not due to ship out for another two months!" she cries.

He nods impatiently. "That's exactly why we need him out early. If he leaves now— and this is very important; if he leaves _without telling you_ — we can get him on abandonment."

"Hawkeye, he'll never agree to that. He'll make a fuss and dig his heels in and make calls to his superiors so he can stay longer… It's not going to work."

"Unless he already agreed to it," BJ says smugly.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, we've spoken to his lawyer, and it turns out that Donald is not one hundred percent scum—"

"Only about ninety-eight-point-seven," Hawkeye adds.

"—because he's agreed to go along early, without a fuss," BJ finishes.

"But isn't it illegal to get a divorce if the other party is guilty too?"

"Yeah, but the court doesn't need to _know_ that he's in on the plan. As long as Donald doesn't tell you when he's leaving, and as long as everyone coordinates their stories, we can make this work."

Margaret instinctively balks at the idea. "I don't want to lie."

Hawkeye huffs. He plants his hands on the desk and snaps, "Look, do you want a divorce or not? I don't _like_ making stuff up; that wasn't what I went to school for and it's not what I spent most of my life after school doing. It's downright _stupid_ that we have to lie, when you think about it, I mean, people shouldn't have to cook up wild stories and arrange for adultery and bribe witnesses just because they aren't happy anymore. I mean, we might go out of business if the state ever became no-fault, but I think I could sell my car if it meant more happy people."

"You don't drive," BJ mumbles behind him.

Hawkeye scoffs. "You know what I mean."

BJ sighs and nods. "Yeah, I do. It's submoronic, but it's what we've got to work with. Listen, you've got to trust us, Margaret. This kind of thing happens in more divorce cases than you think. Besides, lying to official people is our bread and butter. We know what we're doing."

She looks at Hawkeye, who is easier to read, and folds her arms: _I want this to work so badly that I don't think I can handle a failure. I've been waiting for this a long time._ He stares back at her and spreads his hands: _So what are you waiting for?_

"Okay. Tell me your stupid plan."

Hawkeye gives her a little smile. She thinks he's being sincere. "It's simple, really. First, we need to know who Donald's boss is here at the Presidio."

"General Sam Ridgeway. But he doesn't take calls unless they're very important—"

"That's okay. We don't need to actually call him; we just need to pretend to be him." She's about to splutter something about impersonating a general probably being a felony, but BJ rolls on. "Next we need to get through to Fort Dix and speak to… whoever's in charge."

Her heart sinks. "General Art Fluger, but—"

"Terrific." Hawkeye scribbles something down on a piece of paper. "So then we call Fluger, pretend to be Ridgeway, and get Donald reassigned early."

"Would you two _shut up_ and listen to me?! It won't work! Fluger and Ridgeway have known each other since the first World War! They're not going to be fooled by a couple of twerps in San Francisco!"

They're all silent for a second before Hawkeye frowns. "Hang on. How do you know this?"

Margaret sighs and rubs her temples. "My father's known them both for years. Ridgeway and his wife used to play bridge with my parents when we were stationed at Fort Dix— my father was better than Sam, but sometimes he lost on purpose. And I've known General Fluger since I was a little girl; he came to my second birthday party." She laughs, remembering. "He sounds like a foghorn… I think some of the guests went deaf when he sang Happy Birthday. He was always paranoid that my father was making eyes at his wife." She deepens her voice: " _Watch your women like hawks, that's what I always say!_ My mother used to laugh at that, although it wasn't really funny."

The lawyers exchange a look. BJ raises an eyebrow. "Think that's enough to go on?"

"I don't see why not."

She throws her arms in the air, but she can feel that they've made up their minds. "You can't pretend to be a man you've never met!"

Hawkeye is already heading to the phone and kicking back in his chair. "Why not? I know he sounds like a foghorn, he's sort of a jackass, if you'll pardon my _Français_ , he's paranoid about his wife, who's named, uh…"

"Anna, but it doesn't matter! They have each other's private numbers, they don't go through regular channels!"

Hawkeye appears totally unfazed by this news. "Hm. So all we have to do is get their private numbers. Beej! Break out the magic box!"

"What the hell is that?"

"It's where we keep all the names and numbers of anyone who owes us favors," BJ explains, fishing a little blue box out of the depths of Hawkeye's desk. It's filled with index cards, which don't appear to be in any particular order. "Lotta of army people in here. One of them has got to know how to get Ridgeway on the phone." He inverts the box and cards shower down onto the table. Margaret stares at him in mingled horror and fascination. He smiles, evidently oblivious to the inefficiency of this method. "Well, now you know why we asked you to come," he says cheerfully. "Let's get cracking. Hawk, you call first and I'll listen on the other line."

An hour and a half later, BJ is sitting on the carpet with his legs crossed, shelling pistachios and trying to catch them in his mouth. Next to him, Margaret has taken off her shoes and is alphabetizing the unused cards. Hawkeye has lost his tie and is lying face-up on his desk. The floor is covered with discarded index cards.

"Sorry I made you waste all those favors," she says quietly.

"Nah, don't worry about it," BJ says and pats her hand. "We don't count the favor as returned unless they can actually do something for us. One day we'll need a pallet of Spam, and that supply sergeant in Guam will be freed of his debt to us."

Hawkeye suddenly sits bolt upright. "Sam Kelsey," he mumbles, and dives back into his desk.

"Who's he?" Margaret looks at BJ, expecting him to give her a rundown on Sam Kelsey's case and whatever scheme they used to win, but he only frowns.

"Beats me. Hawk, who is this guy?"

"He's a doctor, army comma regular. He was at Fort Dix before the war, used to do house calls for all the big brass. When I knew him— goddammit, I need a new desk— he was a captain stationed near Seoul. Met him the— nope, wrong drawer— first time I went to Tokyo on R and R. Boy, was that a weekend to remember, if you know what I mea— aha! There you are, my sweet." He emerges with a dirty scrap of paper and waggles his eyebrows at them. "Let's see if I've still got the touch." He flops into his chair and kicks his feet up onto the desk as he dials.

"Hi-iiii. Is this Sam Kelsey? Hawkeye Pierce speaking." He has a gigantic grin on his face. "Oh, I'm in San Francisco these days in the divorce business. Yeah… Ha! No, not yet, but I'm holding out for one of my own… Now how about you? Uh-huh. New York! That's terrific! Best city— ah, you remember that! Yeah, well, what can I say…" He laughs. "Exactly!"

She turns to BJ and murmurs, "You think this guy will have the number?" BJ shrugs without looking away from Hawkeye, still happily making small talk.

"Guess we'll have to see. Hawkeye seems to have a good feeling about it, though." He keeps his voice neutral, but he looks like he could reach through the phone and cheerfully strangle Sam Kelsey without breaking a sweat.

Margaret tunes back in to what Hawkeye is saying. "…Listen, Sam, I called because I need a favor. One of my clients needs to reach General Fluger at Fort Dix. Yeah— no, no, I need his private number… It's kind of a long story. Look, I know it's kind of a long shot, but at this point I'll be over the moon if you could even give me the number of someone who knows the number." He pauses. When he speaks again, he's grinning even wider than before. "No kidding. Sam, you're a life-saver. Wait a minute, wait a minute, I need a pen— okay, shoot." He scribbles something on the inside of his arm instead of using one of the many pieces of paper on his desk. "Got it. Look, I'm really serious, I'll never forget you for this. Well, not that I had before…" He laughs again. "Right. Listen, thanks again. Okay. Bye now!"

BJ crosses the room to perch on the edge of the desk where Hawkeye is sitting. "Sam came through for you, huh?"

"Yeah, he really—" He must hear something that Margaret can't in BJ's voice, because Hawkeye cuts himself off abruptly and stares at BJ.

"Beej," he says very seriously.

"What?"

"You and your crazy complexes," he says, starting to laugh. "Listen, I knew him for all of two days, and _I_ was the one who broke _his_ heart. Besides—" he pats BJ's hand and smiles up at him. "—you know I only have eyes for you, darling." It's a joke, she thinks. And then BJ relaxes almost imperceptibly and smiles back, a little rueful, and she knows it isn't really a joke. Something about it is making her chest hurt, so she clears her throat as loudly as possible.

"Can we call the general now?"

Margaret and Hawkeye perch on the arms of the desk chair as BJ dials the number. She reaches around to grab at Hawkeye's arm for balance; it strikes her suddenly that this is maybe closer than she should be to two unmarried men she only met a month ago. But then she remembers their joke, and Helen, so maybe she has nothing to worry about. "Art!" BJ bellows into the phone. "Is that you? Whaddaya mean, who the hell is this? It's Sam!" There's a long, tense pause as they strain to hear Fluger's response. Margaret quadruple-crosses her fingers. Hawkeye shifts around next to her, probably trying to cross his toes.

At last, BJ relaxes and gives them a thumbs-up. She sighs in relief, but Hawkeye grabs her arm and whispers, "It's not over until the fat guy sings the national anthem."

"HA!" BJ roars and she nearly falls off her end of the chair. "That's what I always say, that's what I always say!" He hops up and paces the office.

"Listen, Fluger, I gotta request for you. I've got a Lieutenant Colonel here, a Donald Penobscot… yeah, that's the one. Uh-huh. He's got orders for six weeks, right? Yeah, well, I want that hairy earthworm out of my base before he tries to make eyes at my Anna again!… You know these goddamn West Point types! You give 'em a comfortable job in a damn good city, and before you know it, they're acting like they gave _you_ the position!"

Margaret clamps a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. She darts a look over at Hawkeye: he's grinning, proud at BJ's deviousness, or maybe just that his plan is working.

"HA! RIGHT!" BJ yells again. "Okay, Art. We'll see each other soon! Give your old lady my regards."

They whoop and cheer and dance around the room. BJ lifts her into the air and twirls her around, and then Hawkeye insists on trying to do the Lindy with her. Once they're sitting on the floor, wrung out with simple joy, Margaret remembers what she came for.

"Do either of you know any apartments for rent?"

*******

It turns out that BJ's ex-wife is a real estate agent with a lot of connections. Two weeks later, Margaret moves into a little apartment near the Art Institute in Russian Hill, with Helen's help. As soon as the furniture is hauled up the stairs and the movers have sped off, she insists on cleaning the floor before they can start moving things in. Helen doesn't seem surprised by this. Just sighs, "Okay, Major," and rolls her sleeves up past her elbows.

About halfway through the boxes, Margaret takes a break to crack the kitchen window. It takes a while for her to work it open— the sash sticks, but that's easy enough to fix— but she manages to make enough space to fit her head through. She looks out at a postage-stamp backyard. Beyond that, buildings; beyond that, the sky. Maybe if she stays here for a few minutes longer, she'll feel the breeze off San Francisco Bay. She hears Helen come in behind her.

"Anything good?"

"Not much of a view, but at least I don't have to share it." She turns. Helen is looking at her— almost sad. Margaret opens her mouth to ask her what's the matter. But the look vanishes and somehow Helen tucks it away so neatly and beautifully, it's as though the feeling was never there at all.

"I'll put this one in the bedroom," she says as she moves out of the kitchen. Margaret watches her go. Had it been sadness or pity? Does Helen pity her? The thought makes her want to scream. She walks back out into the hallway.

They move the next few boxes in silence as Margaret seethes. She doesn't want anyone's pity; she's better off on her own, and it's stupid because it isn't Helen's fault, but she's angry because stupid Helen just doesn't know, she never will. Not about any of it. And now Helen's probably thinking about their fight, and how Margaret is too much of a coward to talk about it, and how Helen was just trying to tell her the truth but then stupid, hot-headed, stubborn Margaret blew up at her. (She wonders if she's angrier at Helen or herself.) And she's angry because she wishes she could hide things away like Helen instead of blowing up, she wants to go back and do things differently, she wants to—

"You want help with that? Looks heavy."

Margaret doesn't know why. She's straining to keep the box in her arms from falling onto the kitchen floor. It's too heavy for one person. She knows that.

But she says, as if from very far away: "No, I can do it."

"Are you sure? Let me help."

Helen reaches out to take the box. Margaret jerks away. "No, I said I can do it." Her arms don't seem to be connected to her body anymore; her brain is screaming _LET GO!_ and her fingers tighten on the cardboard saying _we've got to do it alone_ and her legs twitch backwards saying _we've got to get out of here_.

Helen grabs it, and Margaret pulls back. The box slips from both their hands and explodes in a flurry of paper on the floor.

They stare. Margaret takes a step back. Her legs mean to take her out the door and down to the street, but her back hits the kitchen wall instead. And just like that, she sits down on the floor and starts to cry.

"Margaret, Margaret, what's the matter?" Helen slides down the wall to sit next to her. Puts an arm around her shoulder. Margaret can't feel it.

"What do you mean, what's the matter?" she sobs. "Everything just spilled all over the place!"

"Margaret, it's alright, we can fix it. We'll pick it all up."

"It's not alright!"

"It's only paper." Helen strokes her hair.

"No, it's not alright, I'm a mess and you're so neat."

"Me, neat? I think you've got the wrong Helen! I mean, compared to you, I'm practically a teenage boy."

"No, you're not, you've just got no idea, I mean you're neat and I'm— I'm leaking things all over the place, I can't hold it in, it's all just spilling out and I— I can't _control_ it all anymore, it's all just—"

"Okay. Okay." Helen pulls her in. She stays there for a long time. Face pressed into Helen's collarbone. Gasping in mouthfuls of air and sweat and perfume. No desire, no aching want, no romance. Just the assurance that somebody loves her enough to sit on the kitchen floor and hold her until their arms cramp.

At last Margaret sits up, scrubs at her cheeks, sniffs. She doesn't allow herself to think about the little pang of loss she feels at dislodging Helen's cheek from where it's been resting on the top of her head."I hate crying." The late-May light has begun to shift. "Can we clean this shit up?"

She feels rather than sees Helen's answering half-smile. "Yeah. This place is a mess." They fall back into a familiar pattern as they pack diaries, recipes, account books, stationery; Margaret directing and Helen ignoring any orders she deems unnecessarily picky or inefficient. Finally all that's left is the mass of letters spilling their contents across the tile, and they fall into a comfortable silence as they clean.

"Margaret?"

"Yeah."

"Are these all from me?" She holds up a stack of envelopes, all with the same looping handwriting addressing them to Maj. Margaret Houlihan.

"Yes." She doesn't need to say it: _I saved every single one you sent me._

"God, this is— what, six months worth, and I wrote you once a week… how are there so many?"

"Well, I didn't just keep the ones from the war. I have all the ones from after I left Fort Benning, too. That's a few years' worth. See? That one's from before I even became a major." Helen laughs a little, almost awed. Margaret tries hard to sound nonchalant, as though it's possible to be careless about saving everything someone's ever given you. She reaches over to grab another from the pile near Helen's feet. "And this one— February '54— that's the first one you sent me when you came to California.

"God, I didn't even have my own place, look—" Helen points at the return address. There's a small scar at the base of her right index finger. It's new. "You know, that's a special kind of punishment, moving out near your best friend, and then having to live for two weeks at your little brother's house instead." _Best friend. Don't analyze. Change the subject._

"Besides, you wrote more than once a week when you first got back. See, these ones—" she lifts two more from the floor."These are both written around the end of November '52. Postmarked within a week of each other."

Helen takes the tattered envelopes. Turns them over and over in her hands. Margaret is inexplicably nervous."How come these ones are so beat-up?"

"That's because I carried the first few around folded up in my pocket, until they were nearly falling apart."

Helen is giving her a strange look: amusement? Confusion? Is that nervousness? "So what did you do with the later ones?" Her voice is rough and low.

"I had to stop carrying the letters around when I nearly lost one in OR. Klinger rescued it from falling into a puddle of blood. After that… after that I just read them in my tent." _I read them until I had them memorized._ "That's why the rest are in much better condition."

The pile's almost cleaned. Helen doesn't try to sort them— she knows that anyone who tries to help will only end up destroying Margaret's hyperspecific organization system. Margaret loves her for this, for how she knows this without having to be told.

Helen mumbles almost to herself. "There are so many… what did I say in all of them?" Margaret tries to find something that won't hurt too much to talk about. But her mind is suddenly blank, and she can only remember the things that Helen didn't say in her letters.

She'd spent the last seven months of the war trying to read between the lines of Helen's letters, wondering what she was leaving out. Sometimes Margaret heard her own voice in her ears: _Don't you think I want to believe you? I can't afford to take a chance._ She still didn't know how to help Helen. Wishing that she could was making her sick, although that could have just been the war finally beginning to take its toll on her body. She didn't think it really mattered— either way she stayed awake long into the night, wishing things were different.

So she made up her own story and gave it a happy ending. It started like this: _Helen is safe. She doesn't have bad dreams every night anymore. I get to see her before I turn forty._ At some point other people vanished from the story. It became: _One of us gets a dog. Helen's hair starts to go gray at the temples._ It ended like this: _We aren't much for elaborate meals, being regular army, and sometimes we eat leftover pie for breakfast. Once a year we go camping and we don't board the dogs, we take them with us._ It was just a story, but it was as real as any imagined future could be.

She almost says: _Do you want to hear a story?_

But that'll ruin the tentative peace they have going. So she just says quietly: "You had a lot to tell me."

"I don't think I want to know what I told you." Helen turns away. Hauls the box onto the counter. Fiddles with the papers inside. It sounds like a joke that isn't really a joke. Like an invitation. Like maybe Helen just doesn't know how to ask.

She speaks without thinking: "Dear Margaret, don't be mad, but you still owe me three dollars and nineteen cents." Helen spins around to look at her; Margaret feels her face heat. "I mean. That's what you said in the first letter."

"Oh, yeah?" She looks delighted. The expression makes something in Margaret's chest kick. "You got that memorized?"

"I— let me try." Margaret closes her eyes."I was so strung out that I forgot to remind you when I left… and then you talked about your family for a little bit. Your mother cried… and then you said: 'It's not easy. Sometimes I have dreams that I don't think anyone but me would ever understand…"She opens her eyes. Helen is still looking at her. " 'But I've really made a lot of progress. I'm not afraid anymore. It's not so difficult to admit you're an alcoholic when there are many others here who are.' That's all I remember."

Helen grins. "That's _all_? Really? You don't remember the whole thing after three and a half years? What the hell did they teach you in the army anyway?"

Margaret tries hard not to smile, she really does. But it breaks through like it always does around Helen, and for a moment, she can feel something between them, like a magnet drawing them closer and closer until their edges snap together— she blinks, and the moment passes. Uncertainty creeps back in.

She clears her throat. There's still time to be brave. "Whitfield, you've got no ground to stand on. I'll bet five dollars you still have all my letters too." She hopes the teasing bravado will mask the real question: _did you think of me as often as I thought of you?_

Helen laughs a little. "That's no good, you know that I do." She sounds unbearably fond. _It's almost too much honesty for us_ , Margaret thinks. Helen must be thinking the same thing, because her smile changes into something sharper and she says, "Now if you really wanted to bet, you'd put money on where I keep them."

"Alright, let me think." She follows Helen into the future living room where they've dropped their coats. "Okay. Five dollars on a shoebox… under your bed."

She grins and swings her jacket over her shoulders. Somehow she makes it look dashing. "Nope! I keep 'em in my vanity table with all my lotions and love potions."

"Damn!"

"That's okay, kiddo. You can buy me dinner and we'll call it even. I'm in the mood for pizza, if you were wondering."

Margaret rolls her eyes as they walk out of the apartment. "I'm still only a year younger than you," she returns, as she has every time since Helen first said this to her, a lifetime ago in Fort Benning, fresh out of nursing school; as she has every time since Helen hopped out of the Jeep in her Class A's into a puddle of Korean mud and said _Houlihan! Did you miss me, kiddo?_

As they stand in line at the pizza place, Helen hums along to the song on the jukebox: _I used to lie awake and wonder if there could be a someone in this wide world…_ They're strangely quiet, an island of calm amid the shouting cooks and laughing families and giggling couples. It's as though they're alone together. Helen's hair shines in the light. Margaret pretends to study the overhead menu and watches her out of the corner of her eye. She imagines a world in which this is her real life, in which she is brave enough to confess her love in a crowded room on a Sunday night. Of course, she's too pragmatic for that even in her daydreams, so instead she imagines leaning into Helen's shoulder and saying:

 _I lied to him for you, did you know that? Of course you don't, how could you? I never said. Don't worry, he couldn't get me in court, because of course I didn't really lie. I just implied that you were sent home for a medical condition instead of alcohol, and that fucking moron never questioned me when he should have and always asked questions when there was nothing to say. So naturally he believed me. I'm not ashamed of you, Helen, I don't want you to think that I am. But if he knew you were an alcoholic, he would have said you were a bad influence, or you had loose morals, and he would have kept me from seeing you ever again. He would have said all kinds of terrible things and then I— well. I don't know what I would have done. I don't like to think about it. Probably something stupid._ It's still a confession of love, now that she thinks about it.

They're still quiet on the walk back. But when they get back to the apartment, by some unspoken pact, they agree not to talk about the box of letters. Even best friends have their limits for how much serious discussion can be done in a day.

Instead, they eat pizza on the floor and Margaret tries to tell Helen that she'll spoil the dog by feeding him her crust, and Helen points out that she's a gigantic hypocrite because Oliver eats table scraps at every meal already. They argue about whether Katharine Hepburn was better in _The Philadelphia Story_ or _Bringing Up Baby_. (After Korea, I must have seen it two hundred times. You can't have seen it two hundred times. Don't be pedantic. No, really, let's do the math, if you saw a movie once a week for three years… Oh, Helen, you know I got a B in calculus.) The argument quickly devolves into a contest to see who remembers _Bringing Up Baby_ better, which means they re-enact the movie in the kitchen and lose one cent every time they mess up a line, until Helen insists on getting a fuzzy robe "as an homage to one of the greatest performances of our time," which is really just to make Margaret smile. It works, because she laughs so hard that she loses two dollars.

They switch to playing gin on top of the empty pizza box and gossiping about Helen's coworkers until they remember they have work the next day and Helen decides she'd better get going. For the first time in six weeks, Margaret falls asleep on the sofa and does not dream.

Margaret lasts a whole five days in her new apartment before it hits her. One minute she's home for lunch like always, fixing herself a sandwich and feeding stray bits of chicken to Oliver, and the next she's realizing that this is her life now, this little apartment that she owns by herself and shares with her dog. She sits at her new dining table and starts chewing her nails, all appetite gone. Maybe this has all been a gigantic mistake. Maybe she should go to the airport and find out when Donald's departing so she can run after him. She feels like maybe she's dead, or like she could kick herself in the teeth, or like she could punch a hole through the Presidio Wall. Before she can talk herself into a full-scale meltdown, she runs to the phone and dials the first number that her fingers remember.

He picks up on the third ring. "Maaaahhhgret! You've caught me at an opportune time. I've just finished taking the department of orthopedic surgery to the cleaners. Those mallet-wielding meatheads never saw my triple flush coming! You should have seen it, they were—"

"Charles, I didn't call to listen to you chortle. I have news."

"Oh?" His voice drops to nearly a whisper. "What sort of news?"

"I'm getting divorced."

"Oh." There's a pause. "I, ah— I'm sorry to hear that," he says at a normal volume, not sounding sorry at all."

"No, you aren't, and neither am I. I'll have you know that _I_ was the one who left _him._ A whole month ago."

A tremendous sigh of relief. "Thank God. I never liked him. It seems to be an entrance requirement at West Point to have the cognitive functionof industrial-grade rubber. That's why I've always been suspicious of West Point men."

She rolls her eyes. "Sure you are, Charles."

"I'm quite serious. And that unibrow was…" An explosive little snort. Margaret finds herself smiling. "Well, the less said about it the better. But what about you? Are you… alright?"

"More or less. I've found a lawyer— well, two lawyers, really. They're funny. I think you'd hate them." Charles splutters, but she cuts him off before he can make any snarky comments about her base sense of humor. "I was staying with Helen for a bit, but now I've got a place of my own. It's small, but it's close to a park, so at least I can take the dog on walks."

She expects him to make a comment about her tiny apartment, or recommend that she see a lawyer with a Harvard degree. But instead he says: "Helen Whitfield?" The line hisses faintly. "Are you sure that was prudent?"

"What do you mean, prudent? What's wrong with Helen? Are you insinuating that there's something wrong with her?"

"Maahgret, will you calm down? There's nothing wrong with Captain Whitfield. I was merely referring to the fact of… your history with her. And so soon after… the troglodyte." He doesn't elaborate— but then, he doesn't need to. They've spoken about their "inclinations" (Charles' word) only once, when they were both blind drunk at 2 AM in the O Club. Neither of them is anxious to repeat the experience without alcohol. He was the only person in camp who knew what she was (except Klinger, probably, who brought her two letters from Helen every week and always gave her a knowing look when she snatched them from his hands, although they both pretended that he didn't).

"It's fine, Charles. I'm not an idiot. Really. How's Nathan?"

Thankfully, Charles is all too happy to talk about himself (and his boyfriend). "Besides the incurable defect of teaching at _Yale?"_ He pronounces the word in the same tone of voice that he would say _Kansas_ or _Roosevelt_. "Nathan is doing quite well. The school of drama is thinking about putting him up for tenure, you know." He's in the middle of a blow-by-blow retelling of their latest argument over Foucault when he's cut off by his secretary.

"You'll have to excuse me," he says, sounding extremely put out. "One of my patients has ripped his own stitches out. Apparently he thought that he would be able to go home despite the fact that he is currently urinating through a catheter."

"Alright, go deal with your patient. We'll talk again soon."

"Alright. Maahgret?"

"Yes?"

He hesitates before saying, "You sound yourself again, you know."

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing. Just… happier."

A long pause. "Thanks, Charles," she says. Her voice sounds soft and— yes, happy. So she clears her throat loudly and snaps, "Isn't your patient dying? What are you doing on the phone?"

Heavy sigh, a crackle of static. "Good- _bye_ , Maahgret." Click. Margaret smiles as she hangs up the phone.

She's rummaging around in search of something already cooked when she notices something white poking out from under the fridge. She crouches down to slide it out: an envelope addressed to Maj. Margaret Houlihan. She unfolds the letter inside (dated December 3, 1952) and finds herself mouthing the words as she reads:

_Dear Margaret,_

_You asked me what I dream about in your last letter. Sometimes I dream of hellfire and damnation, but I guess that could just be the war, and not God after all. And sometimes I dream that you and I are getting dressed up to go out to the theater, but then we step outside and goddamn if the Koreans aren't shelling Broadway and you get ash on your green dress. You're still a knockout, though. I don't know why I'm telling you all this— but you're my best friend, and if I can't tell you, then who can I tell?_

_I guess I'm making this all sound pretty bad. It really isn't. I'm making steady steps, as my mother says. It's been wonderful to see my parents again, and do little stupid things like get up at 9 on Sundays and buy fruit that isn't canned. Do you remember my brother Andy? His company wants him to move out to California soon. If you and Donald end up there after the war, I'll come visit you both. (You and Andy, not you and Donald.) I'm going to miss him like hell. [An illegible scribble, something crossed out.] I miss you. I hope you're doing alright. Give my love to Potter and Klinger. Write back if you have time._

_Yours always, Helen._

The sky is just beginning to fade from black to deep blue when Margaret takes the dog out the next morning. She's in a fugue, hasn't managed to shake last night's dream— if she closes her eyes, she thinks she could slip back into the dream-world, back to a universe that let her hang her feet off the side of a train car and peel an orange to share with Helen, bright and laughing in a green dress besides her. Thinking about it makes her feel lonely. Her body is running on automatic, so she lets Oliver drag her down the street.

She watches her own feet as they move her along, as they follow Oliver down the street, as they stop at a crosswalk. _I'm doing alright, I'm moving_ along, she thinks. They stop under a tree. She looks around— _when did everything get so green?_ Cars rumble around them. San Francisco is starting to wake up. Oliver raises his head as a bakery truck rolls by them.

 _This could be enough. I'm successful. I'm content. I don't need to sit on top of a train and peel oranges._ Maybe it's just residue from the dream, but the thought doesn't seem as convincing as it once did. She looks up at the sky, starting to lighten to pale yellow at its edges. Takes a deep breath.Knows that there will be no going back once she allows herself to think about it, and thinks it anyway:

_What if I want more?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heavy inspiration from Orla Gartland's "I Go Crazy" and Crowded House's "As Sure As I Am," especially: “I want it, everything you throw out/There must be something you can do without…” Of course that's a Hawkbeej song first and foremost but those lyrics heavily inspired this chapter. (I'll try to figure out how to link the playlist-- if not here then in the next chapter.) Also, the chapter count went up again. Whoops.
> 
> I have midterms coming up so it’ll be 2 weeks until the next update. Thank you all so much for reading and commenting! I love hearing your thoughts and favorite lines. If you got this far, I love you; let’s have a summer wedding.
> 
> EDIT: I forgot to mention what song Helen is singing! It's "I Hadn't Anyone Till You" by Cole Porter, sung by Billie Holiday (although I'll always love the Ella Fitzgerald version best).


	4. June 1956

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> June 1956. Alternate title: The stupid goddamn war, a family of five, and a miracle from long ago.
> 
> A note on the timeline, which I’ve fudged: Margaret and Donald marry in August ’51. He leaves for San Francisco in May ’52; Helen arrives at the 4077 at the beginning of June. BJ is wounded sometime in October, about one month before Helen is sent home.

Margaret is ready to throw things when BJ opens the door. He looks tired and his shirt is untucked, and on another day she might feel bad enough not to have a meltdown in his office on a Friday evening. But now that The Snot has decided that her money was really _his_ , she feels no guilt over her anger.

"Goddammit," he mumbles, and then seems to remember that she can hear him. "Uh, sorry, not you, Margaret, um— HAWK!" he yells over this shoulder. "Did you remember that Margaret was coming today?"

From the office: "YES!"

"Then _why_ didn't you remind me?"

"I _did_ remind you! Yesterday! And it was on the wall calendar!"

"Daddy, don't yell." Margaret hadn't even noticed the little girl sitting at the end of the long table in the main room, surrounded by crayons and scrap paper. "You're disturbing my focus."

BJ sighs through his nose and smiles a little. "Sorry, Erin. We'll keep it down." He turns back to Margaret. "Sorry to you too. We're going to court tomorrow, but there have been some… complications with the husband. Anyway, things are sort of a mess right now. Would you mind terribly if you had to wait for a few minutes out here?" She forces herself to calm down, reminds herself that Donald won't siphon more of her life savings away if she has to wait for five minutes. Besides, it would look bad to start screaming and destroying furniture in front of a kid.

"No, that's alright. I'm sure Erin will keep me company."

Erin looks up for the first time, straight at Margaret. She's a carbon copy of her father: same blue eyes, same dirty-blond hair, same set of her jaw. "Would you like to have a seat?" Margaret takes the one next to her. Erin's smile is the same as her father's, too.

"We'll just be a few minutes," BJ calls over his shoulder as he walks towards the office.

She hears Hawkeye say, "Beej, I can't find that trial brief."

"Have you tried looking in your underwear drawer?"

"That line was staler than Army bread the _first_ time you said it, and it's been at least fifty-ni—" The door clicks shut.

Erin sets her crayon down and extends her hand. Margaret wonders if this is also something learned from BJ. "My name is Erin Hunnicutt. How do you do?"

Amused, Margaret shakes her tiny, warm hand. "I'm Margaret. It's nice to meet you."

"I'm five."

"You're very grown-up for five."

She appears to be pleased by this. "That's 'cause I'm a people person."

"Really?"

Erin goes back to coloring with great focus. "Uh-huh. Hawk told me."

"What are you working on?"

"That's me." She points to a figure in a red dress, then to another in purple. "That's Angela Wu. We're best friends. And that—" she points to something that looks vaguely like a gigantic letter Y.Whatever it is, it dwarfs both girls, although that could be due to the fact that kindergarteners rarely make scale drawings. "That's our slingshot."

"It's awfully big."

"Well, we're going to put Bruce in it. Angela said— well, her brother said we could maybe even send him to New Jersey if we had a reallyreallyreally big rubber band."

"Who's Bruce?"

Erin launches into a long explanation detailing the evils of Bruce Wentworth: ink-spiller, hair-puller, marble thief. Her hands wave around to illustrate her points; it reminds Margaret of Hawkeye somehow. At last, Erin runs out of breath and decides to wrap her story up: "So we need to send him far away." She goes back to coloring in her comically large slingshot.

"You and your friend?"

"Angela. And she's my _best_ friend. That's different from regular."

"Yes, it is."

"You have a best friend?"

"Of course." Erin must sense a story, because she puts down her crayons again and turns to Margaret.

"What's she like?"

*******

_I know what I'm worth,_ she told herself as she approached the big white house. So what if he was a ranking officer? That blowhard Perry deserved it for saying it in front of all those other nurses when he _knew_ that she was still trying to find her place among them. She had earned her spot on her own merit, without her father's help. And anyway, nothing would be hurt except his dignity when he spit cognac and pickle juice all over his dress uniform.

She snickered to herself as she crept around to the back window and hauled herself up so that all her weight was resting on her arms. She felt around for the bottle of cognac, but just as her fingers wrapped around something cool and smooth, someone spoke behind her.

"Houlihan?"

Margaret yanked her arm back so fast that she lost her balanceand hit the ground with a thud. There was Helen Whitfield, uniform still pressed at five in the evening, all sharp angles in the fading light.

"Lieutenant Whitfield, I—" She floundered for something that would explain why she had been breaking into an officer's kitchen window, and why she was now sitting on her ass in the dirt with a bottle of very expensive cognac in one hand and an unscrewed jar of pickles at her feet.

"Save it, kiddo." Margaret shut up. She had been at Fort Benning for two weeks, but she knew plenty about Helen Whitfield: she was tough as nails, smarter than most of the officers, a legendary partier, cool as ice— and of course, she owned a shiny black motorbike. Yet here she was, looking down at Margaret in her dusty uniform and calling her _kiddo,_ and extending a hand down to her. "Is that Major Perry's cognac?"

Margaret took Helen's hand and stood. There was no point in lying, so she nodded as she nervously dusted off her uniform. "He was a real son of a bitch to you this morning, I hear." Her accent softened the curse somehow. Margaret nodded again.

"Are you going to put me on report?"

Helen smiled. "I wasn't planning on it, no." She turned to go— then stopped and looked back at Margaret. Considering.

"Yes?" She tried to sound as cool as Helen, but her voice cracked.

"Nothing against gherkin juice as a form of revenge, of course. But I think tabasco sauce might add a little additional kick to the major's drink, don't you?"Helen's eyes sparkled. She looked like she was about to start laughing. Margaret wanted to laugh with her.

She dusted her uniform off again. "Theoretically, I'm sure it would. But experimentally, I don't know where I would get any."

Helen really grinned then."Well, today's your lucky day! I happen to know a girl who recently received a bottle of the stuff from a patient."

"Really? What's her name?"

She stuck her hand out. "Whitfield. But you can call me Helen. And for the record, that jackass Perry was wrong about you."

*******

Erin laughs delightedly. "Did he spit pickle juice?"

"Yes!" She lowers her voice confidentially and Erin leans in. "All over the beautiful white tablecloth. Helen and I spied through the window."

"Did you do a lot of pranks like that?"

"When I was younger, yes, but only when my friends and I played jokes on each other. Or when people were very mean."

"Like Bruce?"

"Yes, like Bruce, although we never thought of the slingshot. I haven't done anything like that in… a long time."

"How long?" She has to think about the answer.

"Three years. I caught a mouse and put it in someone's pajama pants. It was alright, though, because Doctor Winchester and I were friends."

"Winchester?" They both startle at the sound of BJ's voice. He's come back into the room without either of them noticing.

"That's right. He was a surgeon at the 4077; we worked together for two years."

His brows furrow as he leans against the doorframe. "That name sounds familiar. Winchester…"

Hawkeye comes into the room, frowning. "Wait a minute, was this guy Winchester named Chaaahles? And was he also balding and a jackass?"

That makes her laugh. "Oh, that's him alright."

Hawkeye and BJ grin at the same time. Hawkeye turns to smack BJ on the arm and says,"He's the guy that patched you up!"

"I remember him now! Of course, I was so drugged up on pain meds that all I really remember of him was the accent and how he wouldn't shut up about Boston."

"Pain medication?"

"Yeah, look." BJ rolls up his already untucked shirt to expose the scar of an old gunshot wound on his abdomen, white and shiny against tanned skin. It's been a few years, but she recognizes Charles' handiwork.

BJ explains how he was shot in a trench by another man in their platoon— a trigger-happy moron who got a little too excited. She's only half-listening; she's picturing BJ, rumpled and tan and kind, shelling pistachios and putting them into her hand to eat, shot in a hospital bed. She pictures Hawkeye, equally rumpled and cracking dirty jokes, with blood on his clothes. Hawkeye, who hates fault-based divorce and the US Army, in fatigues. She feels a little sick thinking about it.

"…and then this one didn't want to leave me alone!" BJ jerks his thumb at Hawkeye as he talks. "He snuck in and sat by my bed until I could walk again. For a couple of days, he even pretended to be part of the MASH so that he could sneak in and visit me every day, at least until our CO found out. Our lieutenant tried to send him back to the unit, but he wouldn't leave, he just hid. They had MPs out looking for him at one point."

"MPs! And they didn't find you? Where did you go?"

Hawkeye scoffs. "Aw, it wasn't hard or anything. I went to the nurses' tent, the showers, the kitchen… for a little while the cook gave me work, and the Moronic Powers thought I was just some idiot who got put on KP for talking back or something."

"He peeled potatoes for six hours."

"What's a few potato peels here and there? Those idiots were going to send me back; I couldn't leave you there. I thought you were going to die!"

"I know. But I didn't." They exchange a long look. Margaret has a feeling that they've had this conversation (argument? is it even that?) so many times that they no longer need to speak the words.

Hawkeye looks away first. "Besides, if I'd left it to the alleged cook, the only edible part of the meal would've been the plastic tray."

"You shouldn't have bothered. The paper napkins came highly recommended by the waitress. Best food I'd eaten in weeks."

"And to think, if you hadn't gotten shot by a total idiot, you never would've got to add them to the Michelin Guide."

Maybe it's the phrasing, but suddenly a memory surfaces: a night shift in post-op, and a man with a shock of black hair, almost asleep in a chair, keeping watch over someone sleeping next to him. A nightmare that wasn't really a nightmare. Two men awake, telling jokes.

"Hawkeye?"

"Uh-huh?"

"Were you a corporal?"

Hawkeye straightens up and frowns. "Yeah. How did you know that?"

"I— I remember you. I was on duty one night when you were at his side. Your uniform was very dirty, and you were very tired, but you didn't want to move until I dragged you into bed."

"Into bed? That's funny, I think I'd remember being in bed with you."

"You were extremely sleep-deprived, you had the cognitive function of a small fungus. Come to think of it, you still do."

"You're _mean_ ," says BJ with mock disapproval as Hawkeye splutters, but he takes her arm and leads her into the office. "Are you sure you don't want to give up nursing and be a lawyer?"

They inform her that Donald is settled in Fort Dix, but is, unfortunately, still a jackass. Yes, they have spoken to his lawyers, and yes, they are going to get her money back. No, they will not have to impersonate anyone to do so; yes, they will get it back completely legally. Somehow Hawkeye gets off on a tangent about the various evils of fault-based divorce. As he paces the office, ranting about scumbag men and the charade of the Californian justice system, BJ flings himself down into a chair and opens a cardboard box of madeleines, looking completely unperturbed. Margaret is only half-watching the show. The rest of her is wondering what Donald is up to, whether he thinks about her or pushes her memory away.

"Maybe I should have seen it coming."

*******

They met in April and were married in August. Nine months later, he was on a plane to San Francisco, and Margaret was right where (it seemed) she had always been. Ankle-deep in bloody sponges and paperwork, patching up boys who weren't old enough to drink. Breathing the smell of iron and harsh soap. Feet swollen from standing. Heart shut down.

And then Radar had handed her the telegram from Helen, and her whole body had lit up with this thought: _it's a miracle._ There could be no other explanation for Helen's reassignment to the 4077 only three weeks after Donald had left for the States, in those days when the war seemed like it would continue until the Yalu ran with blood. Here at last was someone who understood her. Here was someone who would not pity her when she said _we've been married nine months,_ who would nod and squeeze her shoulder and then whip her at gin.

Once they got past the pleasantries and the settling in, it was like no time had passed at all. They ate together, cracked jokes at Charles' expense, spent hours finding new ways to make OR more efficient. Helen talked Margaret out of a screaming phone call to San Francisco; Margaret dragged Helen back to her tent when she got drunk in the Officer's Club and tried to whistle the piccolo part of "Stars and Stripes Forever." Sometimes they stayed up until two in the morning telling stories of their lives apart. By some silent agreement, they rarely spoke of Helen's drinking over the last few years, or of Margaret's affair with Frank. They had said all they needed to in their letters; what did past pain matter when you had been reunited with a friend?

Still, those first few weeks in June, Margaret watched Helen like a hawk to make sure she wasn't overdoing the alcohol. She found nothing amiss. By the time Independence Day rolled around, she'd let her guard down.

The trouble started at the end of July, on a night when the heat stuck to their clothes and sank into their skin. They put on their best dresses in Helen's room, ostensibly because Margaret's was too damn hot, but really it was that getting ready to go out was more fun with someone else. She'd been trying to do the back of her dress by herself, and called to Helen, "Did I get all the hooks?"

  
Helen came out of the bathroom and huffed a _no_ but she didn't sound exasperated, only fond, and she batted Margaret's hand away from her own back and brushed her hair over her shoulder so it wouldn't get in the way, and said _let me help, I can do it if you lean forward a little._ There was nothing that she could do but bend as Helen had asked. She felt Helen's fingers on her skin; she was aware of all her vertebrae but couldn't feel herself breathing at all.

  
She thought it was maybe just one of those moments when her mind slipped away from her, a brief lapse in control. But near midnight, after stumbling back to the hotel with no men, drunk and choking on their own laughter, it happened again. Helen had turned around and said _help me get out of this damn corset,_ and Margaret had pretended to curtsy but ended up tripping over her own feet, which sent them back into fits of laughter.

  
Her fingers were heavy as she tried to undo the little hooks on Helen's dress. _You've overdone it again, Major,_ she told herself, but her hands seemed to be working just fine without instructions. So she watched the back of Helen's neck as she worked, and found herself wanting to lean forward, to press her cheek against Helen's shoulder and wrap her arms around her waist and say _come to bed_. She wanted to kiss the nape of Helen's neck and unfasten the clasp of her necklace like a man would, or for Helen to do the same. _It would be easier if she was my man. Or if I was her man._ The thought scared her so badly that her hands stopped working.

Helen spoke and she jolted. "All done?"

  
"Yes." She'd turned away as Helen shrugged the green dress off. The next day, she told herself it was just the alcohol, and that was a good enough explanation until they got back home to three buses of wounded men. They were both completely sober, 13 hours later, as she watched Helen take her mask off at the end of the session. She looked as wrung-out as Margaret felt, and Margaret found herself wishing that Helen could carry her home and back to bed, or the reverse. Either sounded nice.

  
Then she tried to tell herself she was just touch-starved, that she was just missing Donald. But then Helen began to invade her dreams, and there was no point in lying to herself anymore. All that was left to do was wait for the feeling to pass.

In retrospect, it should have been a sign when she wasn’t surprised at Helen's appearance in her dreams— only afraid. Maybe she had always known. Her friendship with Helen had always looked different from what other girls had: a little more intense and affectionate than might have been appropriate, like they had their own special language that nobody else could speak. They had always been each other's closest, even in Fort Benning, when Helen was beautiful and sharp and could have had anyone as a friend; even in Korea, when Margaret was working overtime to keep the unit running and didn't have time for love.

When Helen went home, she'd thought that maybe the feelings would fade, and it would all be over. The world would be gray again, but things would be easier. And yet the dreams kept coming.

One night, she fell asleep in the mess tent over coffee, during a break from operating in the middle of the night, and dreamed she was being court-martialled. _Lieutenant Whitfield and I are just friends. Nothing more, sir. Yes, we spent a lot of time together while she was at the 4077. Nurses come in and out every few months, but she and I go back a long way… yessir, since we finished nursing school. She's my best friend. Yes, it's true that we hadn't seen each other in a few years before now…_ In the dream, she was starting to sweat. _But being head nurse, well... not too many people are eager to make friends with the same person who yells at them in OR for not having alphabetized all the new medicines within half an hour. A friend, a real friend, is rare._

The general smelled strongly of cigar smoke and booze. The stars on his helmet formed Ursa Minor. He brandished a picture of her old bedroom— the one she always dreamed about. _Well, what do you make of this?_ She leaned in: there, lying on the bed in the light streaming in from the bay window, was Helen. Chestnut hair spread across the pillow, covers tucked up to her chin. Sound asleep. _Come on, Major. What do you have to say for yourself?_

When Father Mulcahy woke her, she screamed. He apologized for waking her, and asked what was wrong. She'd told him it was a nightmare. It was March; the war had lasted nearly three years. He knew better than to ask. As she walked back to OR, she could feel sweat freezing on the back of her neck.

Sometimes she fantasized about calling Donald in the middle of the night just to tell him she'd met somebody else. _A woman,_ she'd say triumphantly _._ But reality always kicked in: if Donald ever found out, it would be the end of their marriage, and Margaret's career, and probably Helen's too. Being married— being normal— meant she couldn't ruin her life by trying to do something stupid like kiss Helen and end up losing one of the best friends she'd ever had. She didn't have to think too much about what the strange magnetic moments meant, because it was never going to go anywhere if she was with someone else. Each time the feeling (which she refused to call love) surfaced, she pushed it back down again; each time, the feeling passed. Margaret Houlihan might have been overbearing and quick-tempered and sometimes too distant, but she was no cheater.

So she stayed with Donald, and tried as hard as she could to make it love even when they were only corresponding through letters and occasional phone calls, and she let Helen get closer and closer. She reminded herself often that one night (she never let herself think farther ahead than that) of perfect happiness wasn't worth an entire future of stability. She went home and got letters from Maryland in Helen's looping handwriting once a week. She tried to forget about it and failed to do so miserably.

 _You're damn lucky to have a best friend. Be happy with what you have,_ she told herself. She's still telling herself that.

*******

"What do you mean?" There is, of course, no way to tell them the whole story, even if her suspicions about their relationship are right.

"Just the stupid goddamn war. That's what started everything," she says. It isn't really a lie.

"Oh, sure, blame the government," says Hawkeye.

BJ shrugs. "Can't be worse than blaming The Snot."

"The Snot _is_ the government."

"Well, technically—"

Margaret huffs. "Are you two finished?"

"Sorry, Margaret. Keep telling the story; we won't make fun anymore. Scout's honor." BJ solemnly raises one hand and holds out the box of madeleines with the other. She thinks it's supposed to be a peace offering. She warily accepts and finds that the madeleines are surprisingly not just edible, but very good.

"Come on, we promise to be good. We're listening." Hawkeye leans forwards in his chair to prop his chin up on his hands.

"That's how we met. On leave, in a crowded bar on the Ginza. I was alone, wondering how to get myself out of an affair— with a married man! Me! Can you believe that? Sometimes I don't. Anyway, the whole thing was starting to sour… and there was Donald. He listened when I spoke to him, addressed me by my rank when I told him I was a nurse. Ten times the man Frank Burns was— that's the guy I was with at the time. Donald was a lieutenant colonel, a West Point man, he had a chin, and strong legs, and muscles like you wouldn't believe; he was everything a man was supposed to be…" In retrospect, maybe that was what she'd liked about him: he was just about as far away from a woman as you could get. "He asked me about myself. Where I was from, my work, my family. We were engaged three days later."

BJ raises his eyebrows. "That's it?" She can tell he wants to say more, but Hawkeye beats him to it.

"Margaret, no offense, but I've met turtles that are higher off the ground than your standards."

She snorts. "Tell me about it. But I was over the moon." She smiles a little at the memory of herself, drunk and laughing over the phone to Potter, ring sparkling on her finger. "I thought, at last, somebody wants me! Here's the love I've been waiting for! It was like nothing I'd ever felt before."

Now Hawkeye snorts."Let me guess. It was spring."

"How did you know?"

"That's how these things go. The weather gets nicer, and life seems like it should get nicer too. So you walk around with stars and pollen in your eyes, and get married in the summer— let me guess again, July?"

"August."

He shrugs. "Eh, close enough for jazz."

"There was a push on. I had to rush to OR in my wedding gown."

"Jesus."

"It wasn't so bad. I was happy. Besides, the sex was good."

BJ chokes on his madeleine and Hawkeye bursts into wild, whooping laughter. "I'm sorry—" he breaks off to wheeze. "I just didn't expect you to say that."

She grins back at him. "Well, it's true."

He waggles his eyebrows. "Strong legs, huh? How about his third le—"

BJ has by now recovered and hisses, "Will you two please keep it down! We have a five-year-old in the next room!"

Margaret laughs. "The door's closed."

"I don't care. Can we get back to Donald— the person? Not his organs?"

She sighs. "Yeah. Well, the sex stayed good, but eventually the honeymoon period wore off." Hawkeye hums thoughtfully and crunches another madeleine. "I think the war sped the whole process up. One day, I came back from R and R early because we'd had a fight. It was a silly thing to waste my leave, but I was so angry. I wanted to get back to work. Then we got wounded… I was closing for Colonel Potter when I realized the magical feeling was gone. That it had never really been magic or extraordinary at all. I _had_ felt it before, or something like it, I'd felt it in every relationship that didn't last. Then the patient was finished, and I moved on to the next one, and I didn't think about it anymore. We had work to do."

Hawkeye shifts like he's going to say something— but he just looks at her. Like he knows something she doesn't, or something she's trying to hide. Or like he recognizes her.

"What?"

"What what?"

"What's that look for?"

He narrows his eyes. She wonders wildly if he's about to make a dig at her naive ideas of marriage, and if so what her response will be, or if he's about to accuse her of being a lesbian, and if so then whether or not she should punch him. But all he says is: "Not to sound like my grandmother, but have you been eating properly since you got divorced? You look like you should eat another madeleine or three." For some reason, she starts to laugh.

Hawkeye watches her with a confused little smile, like he wants to laugh with her but doesn't know why. "What's so funny? And how come you don't laugh like that when I make actual jokes?"

She means to say _your face, your voice, the way I just poured my heart out to you and you gave me a biscuit._ "I guess it's funny that I'm telling you this after having known you for two months already."

BJ gives her a gigantic, cheesy grin."Well, we're friends now. Friends share things."

"Are we?"

"Aren't we? I mean, I hope you don't talk about your ex-husband's family jewels with just anyone. I'd like to think we're special." Margaret tries not to smile or laugh, she really does; she doesn't want to give him the satisfaction. But then BJ waggles his eyebrows at her, and that plus the powerful relief of knowing she isn't alone is too much. She whoops to rival Hawkeye, and pretty soon they're all laughing.

When they've all calmed down, she sighs, "Sometimes I think it was all a bad dream."

"Your marriage? I hope not. Otherwise we're going to starve, and we've got a child to support," says Hawkeye, sniffing a crumb on his finger.

"You know what I mean. It was as though it wasn't real, not really. Like… Everything that was happening to me, around me— it was like a dream. Someone else's story, which I just happened to be in. So when I got married, I didn't know what would happen when I woke up. I thought about the war ending all the time— going home, eating real food, showering with hot water every day… That was real life. It was waiting for me. But when I got married, I felt like I got married in the dream."

"Or nightmare," says Hawkeye.

"Or nightmare," she repeats. "I didn't get married in the real world, as a real person. I got married in a nightmare, as a head nurse, in the middle of a MASH compound, with blood on my wedding dress. I was someone else, a dream-person. How could that have been real?

They're both quiet.

"I didn't think about what would happen when I woke up and my life started again. My husband left for America, and even that didn't feel quite real. My best friend got sent home two weeks early in the last six months of the war—" she cuts herself off. "Two stupid weeks. That's it. That's when everything really began to go downhill."

A strangled little laugh claws its way out of her throat. "You know sometimes I was actually grateful for the war? Those last few months, when we were bugging out once a week and the wounded just kept pouring in… I was so busy with work that I just didn't have the time to worry about my marriage, or how I'd changed. Oh, we wrote once a week— if I had the time— but it was never the same. I couldn't be. Not when he had never seen the front, the men, all the blood. Not after that." _But I wrote to Helen at least once a week and I was always more honest with her than anyone else, because I knew she didn't expect me to come home after the war like nothing had changed, like I hadn't changed, and cook bacon on Saturday mornings and get dressed up for church on Sunday and forget the blood on my dress. She only wanted me to talk to her and not lie. She had blood on her dress too._

"Yeah," says BJ quietly. "I know the feeling." He doesn't sound sad, just matter-of-fact.

They are saved from having to talk about it by a clatter at the door. Erin comes in and headbutts Hawkeye's shoulder like a cat. "Hawk, when are we going home? I'm bored of sitting," she whines. _We._ Like they're all going home together.

Hawkeye doesn't acknowledge the _we_ , just breezes right past it. "Soon, I promise, but we have to finish our work before we go." But Margaret looks over at BJ, and finds him watching Hawkeye and Erin. Frowning a little. Brows drawn together. As soon as he realizes Margaret's looking, the expression vanishes and his face is once again politely neutral, like he didn't want her to notice, and he turns back to his papers. She knows then beyond doubt that her suspicions are right— they _are_ like her— and instead of fear or anger or anxiety, she feels relief.

Erin, who has not noticed the momentous realization happening across the desk, groans loudly. "How much longer is soon?"

"More than a minute and less than an hour, sweetheart," BJ says without turning his head.

"Rrrrrrgghhhh." She thunks her head against Hawkeye's shoulder again gently. "Why can't you have a better job?"

"Define better."

"One where you work less."

BJ sighs. "Nothing comes easy in life, honey. Even Santa comes with a clause." He snickers to himself at that. Hawkeye makes a face and throws a pencil at him. "Work first. Then we'll go home and do something fun."

Erin pouts and appeals to Hawkeye. "But Hawk—"

"It's pronounced derriere. You want something to do, you can write to Gramps."

She smiles, all anger forgotten. "Okay." Before he can tell her no, she snatches a pen off the desk and runs back into the main room.

Margaret turns back to Hawkeye, feigning confusion. "Gramps?"

Hawkeye smiles faintly."My father. He lives in Maine. We—" he pauses. Looks her right in the eye. When he speaks again, he's choosing his words carefully. "We spent last summer there. They got along like a house on fire." _We._ Him and Erin and BJ. A unit.

This is a test. Margaret is not going to fail it. "Just the three of you?"she says, wanting to be sure.

"Yes," says Hawkeye. She can't read his face. BJ is watching her too, now, out of the corner of his eye. His shoulders are set in a hard line.

She nods. "It's good she has all that love. Three parents, an extra set of grandparents." She seems to have said the right thing, because they both relax immediately.

"Just my dad, actually. But four parents."

"Oh." She turns to BJ. "Your ex-wife remarried?"

"No. Peg's set up in Sausalito with… a friend." Something in the way he says _friend,_ still very careful, clicks.

"The other woman in the picture?"

They both look at her blankly. "Huh?"

"On your desk. The one where you're all on the beach."

"Oh, yeah." BJ hands her the frame and leans over the desk to point people out. "That's Peg. The one sitting on her right is Yvette."

"What does she do?"

"Yvette? She runs a bakery in Sausalito. Hence the gigantic box of madeleines."

"And our elevated cholesterol levels," says Hawkeye. "She thinks I'm too skinny."

Margaret studies the photo. Erin is sitting on a blanket and eating a sandwich, explaining something to BJ, looking very serious propped up on his elbow beside her. Hawkeye is sitting up next to BJ and also watching her, looking like he's trying not to smile. Behind Erin stands a small woman— Peg— one hand propped on her hip and the other holding her hat in place, head thrown back in laughter. She is gorgeous. The woman with dark hair and sleeves rolled up past her elbows sits by her feet, looking up and smiling, and seems to think the same.

She hands the frame back. "You have a beautiful family." If they notice the wistfulness in her voice, they don't mention it.

BJ smiles at her as he takes the picture and gently replaces it on the desk. "We like to think so."

"Does Erin stay one week with you two and one with them?"

"Pretty much." Hawkeye suddenly snickers.

"What's so funny? Are you laughing at me?"

"No, no. It's nothing. Well, it's sort of funny you only asked us now about our personal lives. Most people ask right away. They want to know all about our wives and kids, whether we got into divorce law because we got robbed in court, what we go home to in the evening. That kind of thing."

"Well. We're friends now."

BJ raises his eyebrows, but he looks pleased. "Are we?"

"Aren't we?" Hawkeye grins at her.

"What about you?" he says, very casually. Too casually.

"What about me?" This is about to get very bad.

"Is there, you know…" he gestures vaguely. "Anyone?" Her blood goes cold, then hot, then cold again. Her heart hammers, her throat seizes, the rest of her internal organs try to make a break for it—

The phone rings.The lawyers both dive for the receiver at the same time and clonk heads. BJ smacks him out of the way and sends Hawkeye running into the other room for the extension. By the time Hawkeye races back in, she can still hear the blood rushing in her ears as she thanks a higher power that she doesn't really believe in for the safety of her secret.

"Shit," Hawkeye pants, like he's run a mile instead of the length of his office.

BJ checks his watch. "If we leave now, we can be home by… six-fifteen."

"You stay with Erin, I'll go talk to this guy," says Hawkeye, already shoving papers into a battered briefcase.

"You sure? 'Cause—"

"Yeah, yeah, you work out. No, I'll be fine, I can handle him."

Margaret tries to sound confident and in charge, which means she ends up snapping: "Would one of you two mind telling me what on earth is going on?"

"Oh, right. Well, you've probably already noticed, but we've got to go," says BJ as he tries to fit his left arm through the right sleeve of his jacket.

"That does _not_ answer my question. Who was that? Why does it sound like you're conducting some kind of back-alley drug deal?"

"Oh, please, Margaret. Don't be dramatic," says Hawkeye airily. She feels better until he adds: "Nothing big, we're just orchestrating a little light drug possession charge. Run of the mill, just sort of normal-ish."

" _What?"_ This is incredibly illegal. She wonders, not for the first time, if she has made a grave mistake by associating with them.

"Don't blow a vein, he deserves it!"

"Real scum of the earth type," BJ says grimly. "And I don't just say that about anyone. Really, this is probably too humane."

Margaret watches Hawkeye dash around the room, stacking coffee cups and emptying plates full of crumbs out the window. She feels a little lost, a little relieved. Mostly tired of herself. She listens to Erin asking for mushroomburgers (whatever those are— probably some Californian thing) and BJ patiently explaining that they have food at the house, and they need to get home soon. She wants to sleep. Or kick someone. But mostly herself.

Together, they head downstairs; Margaret feels like she's underwater. Outside, it's starting to rain. BJ drapes his jacket over Erin's head and hoists her onto his back. Hawkeye takes BJ's briefcase from him and adjusts the jacket so it's covering Erin's hair completely. Something about the three of them, standing under the awning and murmuring about the rain like any other family, makes her want to sit down in the road and scream her head off.

Hawkeye stoops down to kiss her cheek and tells her to call or drop in when she has time. "We'll talk soon," BJ adds with a smile, but she doesn't think she's imagining the look he shoots her: _don't think you weaselled out of the question that easily._ She watches them race down the street to their car and wonders if her life will ever look that easy.

It's four days before she has the nerve to see Hawkeye and BJ again. She goes on her lunch break, so that if things go badly she has an easy excuse to leave, and wears shoes conducive to running down their office stairs.

"Where's Erin?" she asks as Hawkeye ushers her in. (The sign outside says HUNNICUTT AND PIERCE.)

"At her friend Melanie's. They've gone swimming," says BJ from his perch on the long table, where he's carefully inspecting the innards of a pastrami sandwich.

"Any updates?"

"Sorry to disappoint, but no," says Hawkeye through a mouth of his own sandwich.

"That's alright." She tries to breathe slowly and evenly and not panic. The words are soaring up from her chest with an impossible velocity, moving too fast for her to really understand why she needs to say them; she can't stop to think about it if she wants to be brave. It's the thought of never saying it to anyone that scares her into opening her mouth.

"Do you remember when you asked where it all started? Before?" The words come out so fast that she thinks maybe Hawkeye didn't understand her. But he just says:

"Before when?"

"When we first met."

"Oh. Yeah, of course." Of course.

"It. It wasn't really the dog."

"I figured that."

"Right. That's your job." She chews her lip. Hesitates. "Well. It wasn't really the war either. I think— I think it might have been easier if that was all it was."

"Was there someone else?" says BJ gently, so gently. She takes a deep breath. There is no going back.

"Yes. Her name is Helen."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A slightly shorter chapter this time since I decided to split this into two parts. I did not come up with the slingshot— credit goes to a kid (age 6) who I babysit. One day I would like to be as funny as him. 
> 
> Yvette (Peg’s wife!) is Quebecoise and yes, she runs a bakery in Sausalito. Unfortunately, there isn’t space for her whole life story here, but it’s a good one.
> 
> The mushroomburger Erin talks about is a reference to Daniel Pinkwater’s masterpiece, The Neddiad (and its companion, The Yggyssey). Formative influences on my sense of humor and development as a person. I highly recommend. 
> 
> Lastly, the official [playlist!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4VNblB4cg7QDsi1XHr5Rsw?si=NKmKEhdmRk2uzUjkif5xKA) It’s still in progress, but I’m always taking suggestions on Tumblr @raksheshi. Or just come and say hi! 
> 
> Thank you all for your comments— they’re all that's keeping me going during midterms, no sarcasm— and for reading. Watch this space for more schemes.


	5. Still June 1956

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still June 1956! Picking up right where we left off, here’s the alternate title: Leo Bardonaro, an unprofessional getaway driver, and a borrowed blouse.

"Huh," says BJ when she's finally exhausted her explanation. "No wonder you wanted a divorce."

"What does that mean?" They're all sitting on the table now; BJ's legs kicked up on a chair, Hawkeye lounging in the middle and reclining on his elbows, Margaret with her ankles neatly crossed.

"It means Donald was dissatisfactory in more ways than we thought, that's all. It doesn't matter, though; we love you anyway, Margaret," says Hawkeye and pats her arm.

She pulls back and looks at him, not sure if he's joking. She doesn't know what she'll do if he is. "You're not… I don't know."

"Are you nuts? Why would I have a problem with you being in love with someone? Well, I guess you could have said you were in love with BJ— then we'd have a problem. I sit corrected."

She relaxes a little, but only a little."That's disgusting."

BJ jumps in. "I'm not disgusting! I'll have you know I shower every other day. Or three. Or was it four?"

"I'm not talking to you, Hunnicutt. And anyway, Hawkeye, you know what I meant, so don't be difficult."

"Okay, okay, Jesus. I know what you meant; I won't be difficult. From here on out, I swear to be easy, and nothing but easy," he says with one hand raised. He squeezes her shoulder with his other hand, and then Margaret really does relax. She's about to smile at him, but he ruins the moment by grinning like he's about to make a dirty joke, so she silences him pre-emptively with a nasty look and a "Think before you speak, Pierce."

BJ speaks suddenly. "Margaret?"

"Yeah."

"About Helen. Is she…" BJ trails off and looks at her meaningfully.

"No. Well, probably not. No. I don't know."

"No or you don't know?"

"Both! I don't know. Why are you asking me stupid questions?"

BJ shrugs. "We could find out."

"Wh— You are _not_ hiring a private investigator to spy on Helen! I won't allow it!"

"I never _said_ I was hiring anyone. I meant that _we_ —" he gestures between Hawkeye and himself. "—could find out. Discreetly."

"You?" She snorts. "You clowns wouldn't know discreet if it bit you on the nose!"

Hawkeye draws himself up indignantly. "We would too. Besides, I have an excellent instinct for this sort of thing. Him—" he waves a hand at BJ. "He's okay at it, but me? I'm reigning champion of Manhattan."

"You're from Maine."

"Yeah, but there's nobody with secrets from me in Crabapple Cove. I learned most of what I knew in college."

It's too much already, all this talk of things she's been hiding her whole life, and her stomach twists in anxiety."Can we talk about something else?"

Hawkeye looks like he's going to protest, but BJ cuts him off. "Sure," he says amiably. "How's this: once upon a few weeks ago, a woman announced that she was intending to leave her very rich husband."

"Aw, I hate this one," Hawkeye groans.

Margaret ignores him. "Simple enough. Isn't that your job?"

"Don't interrupt," says Hawkeye, "and this is probably, definitely, not part of our job." It turns out that the woman, whose name is Amelia, is making a case for divorce by getting her husband convicted of manslaughter. The rich man, whose name is Brian Sullivan, killed a woman in a car accident a few months previously. There were no witnesses except Amelia, who was in the passenger seat at the time. She has asked Pierce and Hunnicutt, Attorneys at Law, to help her out in getting to him to confess. Sullivan is extremely superstitious, so Hawkeye and BJ have decided to try and scare him into confessing using a ghost.

"Well, not a real ghost," says BJ, who has gotten up to pace during the explanation. "A fake one."

"Someone has to dress up in the dead woman's clothing— or clothing that looks like what the dead woman wore— and tell him to repent," Hawkeye explains, as though this is all very sensible.

"This— well, first of all, this is blackmail. Second of all, this is the stupidest plan I've ever heard."

BJ shrugs. "We're hoping the latent Catholic guilt will kick in."

Margaret puts her head into her hands and wonders if they were dropped on their heads as children. "How are you even going to get someone to look like a ghost?"

"My friend Leo Bardonaro is in the special-effects business. We were part of the same fraternity at Stanford. He used to be in charge of making sure we had the best Halloween parties on campus. Now he makes all these weird props for the movies— flying saucers, tiny cities, fake bodies, that kind of thing. Damn good at it, too."

Hawkeye rolls his eyes at this for some reason, and interrupts before BJ can say anything more about Leo: "Anyway, we have everything but the ghost for Friday night."

"So get into a dress and do it yourself."

"Can't. The ghost has to yell and wail, and we both aged out of singing soprano parts years ago."

"Then get Peg to do it."

BJ sighs. "I tried. She said dead doesn't go with her eyes."

"Well, don't you know any other women to be ghosts?" she says impatiently.

They're quiet for a minute, thinking about this. "Oho." BJ giggles to himself.

"What, what?"

BJ looks at Margaret, then back at Hawkeye. He's grinning now. Margaret has a bad feeling about this. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

Hawkeye starts to grin too. "I believe I am, oh partner in slime." Together they turn to face her. "Margaret, what are you doing on Friday night?"

*******

Three days later, she's in a tiny bathroom wearing a dress stained with fake blood, staring directly into a lightbulb as tall, skinny Leo applies heavy stage makeup to her face. Hawkeye has been looming in the doorway and trying to micromanage Leo for the last thirty minutes; Leo has been cheerfully ignoring him in favor of discussing Stanford politics with BJ, who is sitting on the counter behind him.

At last, Leo steps away and gives her a critical once-over. "Not bad for a rush job. Take a look at yourself, tell me what you think." He lights a cigar and passes her a hand mirror.

Margaret stares at herself. BJ was right: Leo Bardonaro is good at his job. She _does_ look dead, sort of. At least, she looks like what dead people look like in the movies, which should be more than enough to fool Sullivan. She highly doubts he's seen quite as much death as her, but swipes a little of the dark makeup under her eyes away to make it look more realistic.

She tunes back into the conversation just as Leo says, "How long is this chick supposed to have been dead for?"

"A few months," says BJ. "But I don't think he knows what the states of decomposition are."

"What's he do?" Leo asks around his cigar.

"Banker."

"Aw, those guys don't know shit about shit. This'll hold, as long as you don't get too close. Not that he'd want to get close to someone he killed." The room is starting to fill with smoke; Hawkeye scowls and waves it out of his face. "Hang on, did he even murder this woman?"

"Manslaughter," Hawkeye corrects. "And yes. Well, probably. He never confessed to it, but we know." Margaret decides that the brewing argument is a good opportunity to shove them out of the bathroom so she can finish getting ready.

As soon as they're in the car heading towards the Financial District, Hawkeye starts grumbling. "Thank God. The cigar smoke was getting into my clothes." Margaret rolls her eyes, although neither of them can see her expression in the backseat.

BJ sighs noisily. "I don't know why you don't like Leo."

"Why _I_ don't—! He got you court-martialed! Remember that?"

"You were always more upset about that than I was."

"Maybe you should have been more upset, then!"

"Hawk, I won the case in twenty minutes, I was home in time to skip dinner."

"Well, I just think—"

"Can you two shut up! I'm supposed to be dead! What am I supposed to say to this guy?"

"I don't know. How do ghosts get a guy to confess to manslaughter, Beej?"

BJ rubs his chin thoughtfully. "I guess they have to be pretty direct about what they want. There's no time for small talk when you're only visible for a little bit."

"Could you be any more vague?" BJ opens his mouth to respond, but she cuts him off: "Don't answer that."

Hawkeye twists around in his seat to address her. "Okay, look, you've got to tell him to confess his sins. Or whatever Catholics say. Don't talk too much— silence is scarier than just talking sometimes."

She twists her fingers into the fabric of her stained dress. "Hawkeye, I don't know if I can do this."

"Margaret, the most important part is looking furious and intimidating," says BJ. "You can definitely do that. If it helps, just pretend he's your worst enemy. Anyone who's ever did you wrong." She thinks about it— then smiles. Any man who's ever shoved her around, anyone who's ever gotten between her and her work… This is going to be very, very easy.

"Let's go over the plan one more time."

"You have it memorized," says BJ.

"Can it, Hunnicutt. Now, I'm going to climb up the fire escape and onto the roof, where I'll crouch until Sullivan comes out of the building and into the parking lot. And I'll know this because?

"I'm going to whistle."

"Correct. Thank you. Then I'll stand up. Hawkeye, you throw a pebble in my general direction to make him look up. Do you have the pebbles?"

"Yessir," he says and gives her a left-handed salute.

"Don't give me attitude. Where are they? Show me you have them."

"In my left back pocket," he says promptly. "You can feel them if you want. They're right next to the matches." BJ starts laughing but stops when Margaret shoots him a quelling look.

"Hawkeye, why are you sitting on the— never mind, I'm getting a headache. Anyway, Sullivan will look up, I'll say my bit about repenting and confessing as you light the fireworks, and then—"

"He'll piss his pants in fear just as the fireworks go off with a bang, He'll be distracted by the noise, and by the time he looks back, BJ will be chauffeuring us to safety as you and I make wild, passionate love in the backseat," Hawkeye finishes.

Margaret smiles sweetly and gets out of the car, but leans back in to address him: "Not in your wildest dreams."

*******

"What the FUCK was that?!" Margaret screams as they pull away from the curb with an earsplitting screech of rubber. "Why did the light go out? That was _not_ in the script! _Or_ the plan!"

Hawkeye grins— she realizes belatedly that he's the driver, which also isn't in the plan. "Well, it was sort of an accident, but you have to admit it was pretty effecti—"

"WATCH THE ROAD!" BJ yells beside her, clutching the dashboard as Hawkeye swerves and narrowly avoids a group of pedestrians.

"How the hell did you have an _accident_? What does that even _mean_? Do you even know how difficult it was to get down that fire escape in total darkness?"

"The fireworks were positioned a little too close to the streetlight; they went off and busted the glass," BJ explains, still maintaining a white-knuckle grip on the door handle. "But it certainly did the job of scaring the poor bastard."

"I told you to check the position while you were waiting!"

"Well, we were a little preoccupied," says Hawkeye, making a sharp right and sending Margaret crashing into BJ's shoulder.

" _Busy?_ Doing—" She looks at BJ and notices that the collar of his shirt is slightly rumpled, and the back of his hair is mussed. He clears his throat and looks straight ahead.

"For Christ's sake! You sent me out there to pretend to be a _ghost_ to _extort_ a confession from a murder suspect while you two were _necking?_ "

BJ shrugs. "We got bored waiting for him to show up."

"That— That is UNPROFESSIONAL! I can't _believe_ the auda—" She's about to really go off on him, but then Hawkeye nearly gets them rear-ended and then they're all shrieking in terror. After that, BJ makes them pull over so he can drive. They go about two blocks in total silence, staring straight ahead, until one of them snorts and they're all laughing like maniacs.

"You were terrific!" Hawkeye leans over and punctuates the statement with a kiss to her cheek. Her heart is still thrumming in her ears. She is still, unbelievably, alive and not arrested. Alive and not alone.

"I think he wet his pants," BJ gasps on her other side, tinged green in the traffic light's glow. "When you told him to repent and confess, I thought I was going to die of laughter!"

"I thought I was going to die of fright!" They all crack up again.

Hawkeye wipes tears from his face. "Hey, listen, how would you like to quit your cushy job as a nurse and become a struggling actor? I'll be your agent!"

This sends her back into laughter. "No thank you, I think I've had enough excitement for a lifetime!"

"Margaret, forget him. _I'll_ be your agent." Margaret laughs and turns the radio on— it's a Dizzy Gillespie song, one of Helen's favorites.

"Hey, what are we listening to?" says BJ.

She has to think a minute about the title, but smiles when she gets it. "Long, Long Summer. Helen loves this so—" She freezes. "Oh my god."

"What, what?" Hawkeye tugs at her sleeve the way he does BJ's. It's weirdly comforting, but she's already starting to panic.

"Helen!"

"What about her?"

"I was supposed to meet her for dinner tonight! Oh my god, what time is it?"

BJ checks his watch. "Eight-ten." Her stomach twists.

"Fuck! She's been waiting for nearly fifteen minutes! Oh, how could I—"

"Margaret, don't burst a vein, I just got the car cleaned," says BJ, who is annoyingly unruffled by the whole situation.

"Where does Helen live?" says Hawkeye. She gives him the address and they speed on, music blaring all the while.

Margaret jumps out of the car almost before it stops, and runs towards Helen, waiting on the sidewalk, looking left and right, wearing her favorite blue striped sweater. As soon as Helen sees her, she starts running towards her too; they crash into each other just in front of Helen's apartment building.

"Margaret—"

"Helen, I'm so sorry—" They clutch at each other frantically. Helen's face is cast half into shadow by the glow of a streetlight.

"MaryMotherofGod, are you hurt? What happened to you?"

Margaret looks at her blankly. "Hurt?"

"Margaret, you're covered in blood!"

She looks down at herself in confusion: in the excitement, she'd completely forgotten her costume. "Oh. Right, it's fake. But listen, I really am sorry about making you wait, I was—"

"Oh Lord, your face! What on earth happened out there?"

"I was pretending to be a ghost to scare someone into confessing to murder, I mean manslaughter technically, because these two cretins didn't have anyone else to ask, but we had to wait until it was starting to get dark to scare the guy and then we were driving away and that's why I'm late. I'm sorry you had to wait."

Helen stares at her. After a long moment, she starts to laugh, albeit a little hysterically. "Houlihan, what the hell are you talking about?"

BJ switches the engine off and strides towards them. "I'm sorry, Miss Whitfield, I don't think we've been introduced," he says smoothly, coming into the cone of the streetlight and extending his hand towards Helen. "I'm Cretin Number One, also known as BJ Hunnicutt. It's nice to meet you."

"Oh, _you're_ the maniac lawyer Margaret complains about! I've heard a lot about you.Call me Helen."

Hawkeye hops out of the car and into the light. "Actually, I'm probably the source of the complaints. Call me Cretin Number T—" Hawkeye cuts off. He stares at Helen. Eyes wide and no longer joking. Helen stares back at him. Slowly, she starts to grin.

"Well, well. Small world, B.F. Pierce." It might be her imagination, but Hawkeye appears to flush. He looks down at his shoes and slouches even more than usual. Margaret glances over at BJ and finds that he looks as confused as she feels.

"Helen Whitfield," Hawkeye says, shaking his head. "Of all the streets in San Francisco."

"How on earth didn't I put it together sooner?"

"I'm asking myself the same thing."

"If I'd known _you_ were the famous Hawkeye Pierce, attorney at law, I would have insisted on meeting you again sooner."

"That certainly makes one of us." Helen just throws her head back and laughs at that, the line of her throat perfectly smooth in the yellow light.

Jealousy sweeps through Margaret's body in a nauseating wave. It's a miracle that her voice is steady when she says, "You two know each other?"

"Oh, yeah," says Hawkeye. Some of his bravado is back, because he's starting to smirk. "We met in Korea."

BJ and Margaret exchange a look."Korea?" Margaret repeats.

Helen nods. "Uh-huh. It's quite the story, really, we were—"

"Can we move inside?" Hawkeye crosses his arms. "I have a reputation to maintain." BJ and Margaret look at each other again.

"Of course, where are my manners?" Helen says it lightly, almost like she's going to drop it, but Margaret knows that tone from years of stupid stunts and late-night parties and practical jokes, so she knows that Helen is going to tell the story no matter what. "Let's get that makeup off you," she says, turning to Margaret and taking her arm as they go up the stairs, Hawkeye and BJ trailing behind. "And that awful dress, too."

She tries to pull back, saying, "Helen, I'm really sorry—"

Helen shakes her head and smiles, but it's not quite happy; there's something else she can't read. "Oh, Margaret, it doesn't matter. I'm just glad the blood is fake."

Upstairs, Helen runs a towel under the kitchen tap and starts rubbing the stage makeup off Margaret's face. "So, I met him in the mess tent." Hawkeye mumbles something that sounds like _Christ, here we go._ "He started hitting on me— not very well, but it was endearing."

"Sounds about right," BJ says, leaning in the doorframe.

Hawkeye raises a hand to his chest as though swooning. "Hey, I could take you to court for slander. Would you like to know how many people I've seduced with those lines?"

"No," they all say at the same time.

"Go on, Helen. I'm enjoying this so far," says BJ innocently, looking like he's trying to bite down a laugh. Hawkeye looks incredibly uncomfortable and is doing a terrible job of hiding it.

"Thank you. Well, we didn't tell each other first names, for some reason."

Hawkeye interrupts again: "I just called her 'Captain' because that's what everyone else called her. I didn't know her name was Helen for a couple of days." Maybe it's the rhythm of Helen scrubbing at her face, the warm yellow light bouncing off the green tiles, the cooling air filled with possibility, Hawkeye's storytelling voice, the relief of getting away with something stupid, the nearness of Helen and her callused fingertips holding Margaret's forehead in place; maybe it's just the adrenaline wearing off, but Margaret feels suddenly tired enough to close her eyes.

"Right. Well, he asked me on a date. He was funny, you know? I figured what the hell, he was passing through with a wounded friend, it wasn't going to go past a night or two. So I said yes, but when we got to the O Club, I realized I didn't know his name, and I tried to guess off his dog tags. BF, they said."

"She guessed for an hour before she got it."

"I wasn't even guessing seriously, I just said it as a joke. I laughed so hard I sneezed when he told me I was right. But by then I'd been calling him BFPierce— all one word— and I decided Benjamin Franklin didn't suit him, so I kept calling him BFPierce."

"I told you my nickname!"

"It was loud in there! I thought you said your name was Hot Guy." BJ unsuccessfully disguises his explosive snort of laughter as a cough when Hawkeye glares at him. Margaret doesn't bother to hide hers.

"Why would my nickname be Hot Guy?"

"Makes as much sense as Hawkeye! Anyway, the night progresses. We're sitting on the floor of the supply closet, and things are starting to heat up, and all of a sudden he pulls away from me—"

Hawkeye moans. "Aw, do you have to tell this part?"

"Yes! It's the whole point of the story! Anyway, he pulls away from me, and he puts his head on my shoulder— and bursts into tears."

"What?" Margaret says incredulously.

"Yes! I'm sitting there wound tighter than a ten-day-clock, my shirt's open down to my navel, and here's this guy just weeping into my shoulder. Snot and everything! I asked him what the matter was and he says— well, really he sniffles— he's very sorry about ruining my night, but he just can't do it, because he was in love with somebody else. I said, 'Well, that's fine, so am I. We can pretend for tonight.' But he said, 'I'm in love with someone with blond hair and blue eyes, it just really wouldn't be the same.' And I said—"

"You said, 'Well, that's fine. So am I. Except they're really more green than blue,'" Hawkeye finishes.He's looking at her with— fondness? Nostalgia? Sadness? Maybe all three.

Helen huffs a little laugh and wrings the towel out in the sink. "That's right. We spent the rest of the night just sitting on the supply room floor and talking— home, family, love, all the food we missed from home. Sat there until my ass went numb and he fell asleep. A couple days later he was gone, but boy, did I get a laugh when I told the other nurses what happened." She looks back at Hawkeye. "So tell me, Hot Guy. What happened to your blond, blue-eyed flame?"

Hawkeye smiles. "Turns out he had a thing for skinny, neurotic brunettes." BJ is still leaning in the doorway behind him, watching Hawkeye with a big, dopey smile, like he's the only thing in the room. "He still beats me at chess every time, though. I was hoping love might cure him of that nasty habit."

Margaret holds her breath. Sets her jaw. Waits for Helen to frown, to recoil, to say _what do you mean, he?_ The floor is about to open under her feet and the roof about to cave in; there is no city outside the windows, no ocean, no war, only this kitchen with its green tiles in between her and the end of the world—

Helen turns away from Margaret to look between them. And then she smiles. "Good for you," she says, sounding genuinely pleased. Margaret feels her muscles unclench and her hand uncurl from its loose fist at her side. Helen's voice has neither shock nor disgust at the thought of two men together. Like she knew about them. Or like she understood.

She's so caught up in the dizzying idea of Helen maybe, possibly being _like her_ that she almost misses BJ's response: "What about yours?" He meets Helen's eyes. Something happens then that Margaret can't quite see— she thinks Helen's eyes flicker away, then back to BJ, before she turns back to the sink.

"Yeah, what happened?" says Margaret, praying that her voice isn't giving anything away.

Helen smiles again, almost sad. Runs the towel under the tap again. When she turns back to Margaret, the sadness — if that's what it was— is gone. "The person I fell in love with was married. It couldn't go anywhere." She leans back in. "Close your eyes." Margaret can't see Helen's expression when she says, after a beat: "I'm holding out, though."

Helen ushers her into the bedroom and immediately starts hunting for clothes that will fit. Margaret sits on the bed as Helen combs through her closet, discarding skirts and dresses in a heap almost as fast as she can pull them off their hangers, all the while talking about measurements and weather-appropriate clothing and the quality of fabric these days.

Helen holds a white blouse up and presents it to Margaret. "What do you think?"

_I'll take anything you give me. I don't care as long as it's yours._

"That looks like it ought to work. Do you have pants that go with it?"

Helen nods but doesn't say anything more, just turns back into the semidarkness to her dresser. The sudden silence feels stifling. Margaret shifts to sit on her hands, feeling oddly nervous, as though she's said the wrong thing.

"Helen?"

"Yeah." She doesn't turn around, still going through the dresser.

"Are you alright?"

Helen sets the blouse down and crosses the room to stand between Margaret's legs. Studies her. Still doesn't speak. Margaret can feel her heart in her throat. At last Helen whispers something that sounds like _Jesus Christ_ and yanks Margaret to her chest. Margaret's face is suddenly full of silk blouse and L'Heure Bleue.

"Helen?" She can feel Helen breathing under her cheek.

There's a long moment in which Helen doesn't respond, just wraps her arms around Margaret's shoulders and squeezes. When she speaks, her voice shakes almost imperceptibly. "You scared the shit out of me. All that blood." Helen's hands flit from scapula to spine and back again, almost like she doesn't know what to do with herself.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to." Belatedly, she realizes she should reciprocate; her hands slowly lift themselves to Helen's back.

"I know you didn't. It scared me anyway." Helen pulls back. Looks down at her. Reaches up and brushes stray hair from her forehead. Margaret feels the magnetic pull again, _something's happening something's about to happen_ — and Helen says, "I guess I just don't know what I would do if something happened to you."

The moment is supposed to pass when someone speaks. And yet Margaret still feels dizzy, and Helen is still looking at her, gray eyes shining in the light leaking in from the hallway. She swallows hard. The words are on the tip of her tongue. She wouldn't even have to speak. Her fingers are still wound into the back of Helen's blouse; she could just pull her down and lean in and kiss her. It would be so easy.

A noise from the hallway. From the sound of it, Hawkeye's knocked something over. They're not alone.

A small comfort— it's impossible to tell who lets go first.

Margaret sighs and rises from the bed. "I'd better go change."

"I'll attend to the guests." They both smile at this. Margaret wonders if there's another world in which they entertain guests together. She wonders if Helen has had the same thought. "Should we invite them?"

"Might as well. They did give me a lovely evening."

Helen raises an eyebrow and hands her a pair of dark pants. "I think your standards for a lovely evening are slipping in your old age."

"I know you are, but what am I, Captain?" She shuts the bathroom door before Helen can get the last word in.

*******

It's a little awkward at first; they order at the Chinese restaurant near Helen's apartment in near-silence. But Helen seems to relax when nobody orders alcohol, and BJ must have picked up on it because he makes a joke about not drinking, which makes Helen laugh a little and makes Hawkeye roll his eyes. Things are still a little stiff, but then Hawkeye asks to hear the story of how Margaret and Helen met, and any discomfort Margaret felt vanishes. This is one they know by heart, one told between themselves so many times that all its rough edges and original fear and awkwardness have been worn down and replaced by affection and laughter, like stone made smooth by the sea. They don't tell it to everyone they meet— after all, they have to command respect somehow— but yes, this is a story she knows how to tell.

When Margaret gets to the part where the jackass major spits pickle juice all over the table, Helen stops her: "No, no, it wasn't like that."

"Then how was it?"

"He looked more like—" She pulls a face that makes Margaret laugh so hard she nearly spits her own drink out, which makes Hawkeye do his funny honking laugh that sounds like a goose being sawed in half.

All evening, the four of them tell stories and talk shit and laugh at things that probably aren't funny to anyone else, laugh until Margaret is lightheaded and her stomach hurts and she can't remember the last time she was this happy for this long, and just as she thinks maybe she ought to calm down, Hawkeye will launch into a new story and they'll all crack up again, or BJ will interrupt and say _no no you've got it backwards_ and start arguing with whoever's talking, or Helen will turn to her and touch her arm to get her attention (as though her attention could have been anywhere else) and say low and confidential _Margaret tell them about…_ because they have something between them that nobody else can touch.

As they eat, she can almost pretend that they're two couples on a double date at a Chinese restaurant, Hawkeye putting little bits of duck onto BJ's plate with his chopsticks, Helen sampling Margaret's eggplant and saying _it's good, you'll like it, but it's spicy._ She watches BJ lean back in his seat, sipping his water, leaning into Hawkeye's shoulder. She feels Helen's elbow bump gently against her own, feels their knees brushing under the table. She doesn't apologize for the accidental contact, and neither does Helen.

Margaret imagines a world in which this is true. She looks around, a little guiltily, to see if anyone is staring— and finds that nobody is. With a little start, she realizes that to the rest of the world, they _are_ on a double date: wives on one side of the booth, husbands on the other. Hawkeye across from Margaret, BJ across from Helen.

She thinks that if she could pick one moment to live in forever, it might be this one: surrounded by love, a plate full of hot food, Helen beautiful and at ease with total strangers but for some reason laughing at all Margaret's jokes and touching her shoulder through her borrowed blouse.

"And then— POW! The engine explodes!" Margaret whoops with laughter and clutches Helen's shoulder for stability. "So the general comes rushing down, clutching the banana in his hand, madder than all hell. And he looks down into the foxhole and there's Hawkeye— ankle-deep in bilge water and mud— singing into a banana!"

Hawkeye nods proudly. "La Vie en Rose."

"Oh God, that's right. And the general starts screaming and screaming, waving his banana around…"

" _C'est lui pour moi, moi pour lui dans la vie, il me l'a dit…_ " Hawkeye sings a little too loudly, and Margaret shushes him though her giggles as Helen claps.

Hawkeye sketches a little half-bow. "Thank you, thank you, I'll sign your napkin but I don't do body parts."

"Excuse me," says their waitress, who has appeared from nowhere. They all attempt to sober up and look like adults. "Would you all mind keeping it down a little? My manager says he's gonna have to start watering down the booze if you don't."

They all look at each other very seriously for about two seconds before Helen snorts, and then they're all laughing like lunatics.

"I'm sorry, it's not you," says BJ through his booming laughter. "It's just that the universe has a terrific sense of dramatic irony."

Their waitress looks extremely confused. "Um," she says. "Okay. Would you all like the check now?"

*******

Helen hops out of the car and thanks them all for the dinner and the ride. Margaret leans out of the car and grabs at her sleeve.

"Helen—" She has no idea what to say, she only wants Helen not to go just yet.

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry that you had to wait," she stammers.

Helen smiles— then tilts her chin upward and says in her best Katharine Hepburn voice: "Darling, if I were married to you, I wouldn't mind waiting. I'd wait all night." She reaches out, touches Margaret's hair lightly, and is up the stairs and through the door of her building before Margaret can even think of a suitable response.

As BJ puts the car in gear, Hawkeye swivels around, wearing a grin that takes up most of his face. "Darling, huh?"

"She's quoting Bringing Up Baby. It's a joke— we saw that movie about a hundred times during the war," she says absently, looking out the window. She fiddles with the hem of her blouse and wonders how long she can wait before giving it back.

"Yeah, but Katharine's in love with Cary Grant when she says that line. How could she not be? What a jawline." He pauses, either waiting for a laugh or lost in dreams of chiseled jaws. "Anyway, she likes you."

"Hawkeye, it was a stupid joke. It's not enough to go on." She has no idea why she's trying to talk Hawkeye out of the idea, couldn't explain it to herself if she tried.

He continues, undeterred: "Okay, then how about the way you kept leaning on each other at the restaurant? Or how she kept touching your arm? She said goodbye to you by touching your hair; is that enough to go on?"

"Have you been cataloguing our interactions all evening?"

"That's a stupid question, Margaret. I'm a lawyer and your friend."

"That answer doesn't make any sense. Anyway, that's normal for her. She's touchy."

"Well, you didn't see the way she looked at you in the kitchen."

"What way? When?" Now he has her attention; she catches a flash of his smile in the rearview mirror when he responds.

"When she said she was holding out and conspicuously did not elaborate."

"She could have been talking about anyone."

"No," says BJ. He's been quiet the whole time. "Before that. When Hawkeye asked what happened to her person. She glanced at you and then turned away."

"At me?" she repeats numbly.

Hawkeye looks back at her. "Now that you mention it, your eyes are more green than blue."

******

She meets Hawkeye again on Wednesday, allegedly for lunch, but they both know that they're just meeting to talk. They walk around the city, choosing their paths without speaking. It's strangely peaceful to walk with Hawkeye; he seems calmest when he's in motion. They discuss her case and Donald, Erin starting kindergarten in the fall, BJ being summoned to his estranged parents' house. It takes fifteen minutes of walking before either of them speak of what she's really come for.

"You need to confess. She's not going to wait forever," Hawkeye says after a few minutes of walking in silence. Cars rumble past them; the wind kicks up dust and little bits of paper.

"What if you're wrong?"

"Then I'm wrong. But I don't think I am."

"But if you are," she presses.

"Then you can come over to our house and get really drunk in front of the TV. Well, obviously I don't drink, but we can get special brownies from Peg, which are just as good. We'll eat them with imported ice cream from Maine. My dad's got this dinky little machine— you wouldn't believe the flavors he's cooked up in that thing— candied pecan, can you believe that?"

"Hawkeye, please."

"Okay, okay. Look. If she does love you, then you can tip me generously on your next check. If she doesn't love you— which she _does_ , by the way— then you'll be sad for a while. Maybe you two will still talk, maybe you won't anymore. You'll mope around, and get drunk at our house a couple times. Eventually you'll get better, and it won't hurt so bad. You'll go out again and beautiful women will chase you around…" She laughs a little in spite of herself. He gives her a little smile, pleased that his joke worked. "They'll probably all be crazy about you; how could they not be?" At first Margaret thinks he's still joking, but his face is very serious. "You'll have options. Maybe you'll want one of them back, maybe you won't. But you'll know. Isn't it better to know?"

"I don't think I want anyone else."

"Then it's better to know." They look at each other.

"So what the hell am I supposed to do?"

"I don't know. But I have some ideas," he says casually, bumping her shoulder as they walk on.

"Do you now." She looks at him, hair whipped into disarray by the wind, still oddly sincere.

"Would you like to hear them?"

Margaret allows herself to smile. "I thought you'd never ask."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A slightly shorter chapter this time since I decided to split chapters 3 and 4 into two parts. 
> 
> I’m on tumblr @raksheshi— come say hi and give me recommendations for the fic playlist! (To the two anons who literally came just to say hi after the last chapter: I love you guys.)
> 
> Any and all feedback is appreciated. Thank you all for reading and mega-thanks to anyone who commented so far. Watch this space for the last chapter (and epilogue, which is why the chapter count went up again).


	6. June-October 1956

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> July through October 1956. Alternate title: Point Reyes, a few meltdowns, and no orchestra.

In a stroke of what Hawkeye calls _bravery_ and Margaret calls _stupidity_ , she calls Helen to ask if she wants to come hiking in Point Reyes with her and Oliver for Independence Day. Normally Helen does not let Margaret get her way whenever she feels like it, which is one of the things Margaret loves the most about her. So she expects Helen to politely decline and say she has plans, but Helen is so enthusiastic about the idea that she even volunteers to drive.

"Really?"

"Of course. It's a perfect plan— I can't stand the fireworks these days. Too damn loud."

"I didn't know that."

"Yeah, well, it's sort of a recent development." Helen doesn't elaborate— but then, she doesn't need to. Who wants to talk about the war? "I'll get Thursday off, too. You want me to get an extra thermos for coffee?"

They talk the whole way up, speculating about the drug ring Margaret's landlord is probably running in the basement and wondering if Eisenhower is going to have another heart attack. They tell stories of their worst dates and try to catch each other in a lie, but Helen is too good at bullshitting, so Margaret throws a sandwich wrapper at her and ends the game. Oliver hangs his head out the back window of Helen's shining blue Ford, ears flapping wildly in the breeze. Margaret kicks her bare feet up on the dashboard and is wildly, blindly happy as they talk shit about Army officials.

"Incomb! He'll never make Lieutenant Colonel. If dumb were dirt, he'd be an acre." Helen laughs at that for some reason. "What's so funny?"

Helen glances over at her. "Nothing. Only that's my expression."

"You don't have a patent on it."

"Hey, alright, Major. I just think it's funny to hear you use it. Please, tell me more about Incomb's idiocy."

Margaret happily continues the story of how the dean of medicine attempted to grope a very important donor. Halfway through, she looks over to make sure Helen is still listening— and finds Helen already looking at her.

"What are you looking at?" The words stumble out of her mouth.

Helen shrugs a little and glances back at the road. "What else is there to look at?"

"The road." She points ahead of them— and suddenly it's like the part in a movie where the hero rounds the bend or comes over the top of the cliff and everything falls away— the road is leading them into the sky, and there's the ocean, right below them.

"Hey," says Helen. "This is some view." Her forearm rests on the window frame; her right hand drums on the steering wheel; the wind tosses her hair left and right.

"Some view," Margaret repeats.

They hike all day, surrounded by hills that look a tiny bit like Korea, if you don't count the lack of bomb craters and the smell of the ocean. They collect shells, and try to identify birds, and almost step on a plover nest. Oliver tries to eat a mouse. In the evening, they eat sandwiches on the beach, huddled beneath a gigantic blanket, and watch the stars.

"This place feels like somewhere people were never meant to be," Margaret says.

"How could we be anywhere else?" Helen replies. She looks at Margaret and smiles. The waves crash and hiss.

It's the perfect place, the perfect time to say _I love you, I've always loved you._ Which of course means that when she tries to speak, the words get caught in her throat and she can't say it. She is never going to be able to say it properly.

Helen looks back at the ocean and sips her coffee: the moment passes.

They're quiet on the way back. Helen drives and Margaret sits shotgun, tired and itchy; she's probably got two hundred new bug bites. She feels scratchy on the inside too, like she's stuck in a life that's too small for her and she isn't brave enough to change it, no matter how much she tries. _Things_ are _different,_ she reminds herself, _you've changed._ But everything still feels the same.

The sea rages and blends into the gray sky below them. Margaret thinks she feels that kind of tumult when she sits next to Helen.

She's tired of being here, in this little life, stuck on her best friend. A little part of her wants to leave and move somewhere new and terrible where nobody knows her name, somewhere without confusing, beautiful women named Helen; somewhere without friends who really do want what's best for her. She rests her head against the window and thinks maybe Oliver would like being somewhere with a lot of grass.

The colors outside flow together: gray, blue, tan, green. Maybe it's the lack of sleep, or the rhythmic, soporific rattle of the car as they wind their way along Route 1, but at some point Margaret falls asleep and does not dream.

One weekend BJ invites her over to their house for lunch. Hawkeye opens the door in bare feet, the most outlandish purple Hawaiian shirt Margaret's ever seen, and a furry gray lump on his head. Naturally, she has a laughing fit on their front porch. Hawkeye just crosses his arms and waits for her to calm down.

"I'm sorry, Hawkeye, but you look like a Cossack," she gasps.

"Wrong country! Meet Marlene." He removes the blobby hat from his head; it unfolds itself into a small gray cat with green eyes and white eyebrows. He plops the cat into Margaret's arms and ushers her inside. Their house is bright and airy and filled with books and art and drawings from Erin, to-do lists in Hawkeye's spiky handwriting and phone numbers in BJ's blocky print. Newspapers and file folders blanket the scratched kitchen table— they must be working on a case— but somehow it doesn't seem as messy as the office. It's just the normal clutter of two people sharing a home.

"Why is your cat called Marlene?"

"As in Dietrich?"

"I understood that. But what the hell kind of a name is that for a cat?" Hawkeye turns from where he's been rummaging around in the fridge.

"The eyebrows. See?" Marlene yawns hugely and leaps out of Margaret's arms and onto the kitchen table to recline on a small stack of coupons and newspaper clippings. She does indeed have eyebrows resembling Marlene Dietrich's.

BJ saves Hawkeye from a long argument by ambling into the kitchen with a gigantic bowl of salad and what appears to be a head-sized pomegranate. He's in a similarly hideous yellow Hawaiian shirt, draped over another shirt reading BERKELEY LAW. There's something strange about seeing both of them in regular (she tries not to think about it as "civilian") clothing, in the house that they share. However, the clothing is nowhere near as strange as the thing that appears to have taken up residence on BJ's upper lip.

"Hi, Margaret! Want something to drink?" She stares at him, unable to form a coherent response.

“You’re staring at the mustache, aren’t you," says Hawkeye. "It’s terrible— go on, you pay him for his services, you can tell him it’s terrible.” 

BJ says cheerfully, “Well, you can take the man out of the army, but you can’t take the army-hating spirit out of the man.” He pours Margaret a glass of lemonade, which she didn't ask for, but she's too shocked to complain.

“You had a mustache in the army? What on earth did your CO say?” 

Hawkeye rolls his eyes. “BJ used to tell Colonel Blake that a man needed a little rebellion on his face in order to stay sane.” 

Margaret raises an eyebrow, looks straight at Hawkeye, and says as blandly as possible, “Rebellion? Was that what they called you in the army?” 

BJ throws his head back and laughs as Hawkeye gasps in mock offense. "Are you insinuating that I was anything less than professional?"

“It’s his second middle name after Franklin,” says BJ, still laughing.

"Beej, don't laugh."

"Why not?"

"You moron, she's insulting both of us."

The rest of July passes like this: She walks the dog, goes to work, waits for news. She attempts to knit a sweater, but gives up halfway through and decides to make it a blanket. She gets sick of waiting and goes to Hawkeye and BJ's office, or to their house, ostensibly to talk about her divorce but really just to sit around and talk. They rope her into a few schemes, working as an unpaid consultant for Pierce and Hunnicutt (or Hunnicutt and Pierce), Attorneys at Law. She listens to records with Helen and watches her out of the corner of her eye the whole time, trying to catch Helen watching her back. She makes plans with Hawkeye to confess her feelings, which really means Hawkeye says stupid things to get her to laugh:

"Stuff a love letter into an Easter egg. Then— then you do an egg hunt, and the one with the letter in it will be painted gold. She'll crack it open and find your confession. Who could resist that?"

"She likes oranges? Okay, how's this: peel an orange, write your love confession on a little scroll, put it back in, and sew the peel up. What's wrong with that one? I mean, you're a surgical nurse, I hope you know how to sew."

"I got it. Corn maze, and you'll be waiting with a romantic picnic at the center. Autumn-specific, of course, but I think it has a certain je ne sais quoi about it."

She shoots them all down, of course, but it's nice to know she has someone she can talk to.

*******

August slips in with no fanfare, only heavier air and golden light. One day she visits when Hawkeye is trying to make pierogi with BJ's "assistance." She's only been there about half an hour when BJ throws flour at him, and within minutes he's chasing a screaming Hawkeye around the house trying to pelt him with flour. They seem to forget she's there because BJ rounds the corner and catches Hawkeye in his arms, and they start kissing right there in the kitchen, flour mingling with the dust motes dancing in the evening light, food abandoned on the counter. She is both strangely touched and terrifically disgusted by such a public display of affection.

"Ugh," Margaret mumbles, and shuts the door behind her as she leaves.

She supposes having to deal with the insufferable amount of love in their house is a fair tradeoff. After all, Hawkeye has to deal with her having a mental breakdown on his living room floor.

"There's no way she wants me," Margaret groans to the ceiling.

"There's no way she wants you."

"I'm an idiot who's going to screw up my friendship."

"You're an idiot who's going to screw up your friendship."

"Can you stop repeating everything I say?"

"I _can_ stop repeating everything you say."

"I should just give up. I'm not cut out for love."

"Bullshit," says Hawkeye, lying on the carpet opposite her. "You're loved."

"Love is stupid."

"No, it isn't."

"No, it isn't."

"See? I'm always right. You know, I wish everyone I went against in court was that easy to convince."

They go on like this until the shadows on the ceiling change shape and the sun starts to sink. Hawkeye is in the middle of trying to lecture Margaret about the importance of expressing one's feelings when BJ comes home with two armloads of groceries and politely asks if either of them are in the mood to help, or if they are just inclined to lie there.

Somehow, Hawkeye talks her into inviting Helen to their house for dinner and bridge. He claims that BJ's genetics lead him to have a strong craving for suburban card games in late summer, so really Margaret would be doing them all a favor. BJ contends that this is horseshit and Hawkeye just wants to scope Helen out. Margaret agrees, partly because this is the least stupid plan they've come up with, but mostly because she wants someone else to see what she sees, to tell her that _yes, all those little looks and touches mean what you think they do._

Over pork chops and coleslaw, they discuss the Eisenhower campaign and the kinds of idiots they let graduate from law school these days; talk shit about medical deans and the worst neighbors they've ever had; tell stupid jokes and swap gardening suggestions. By the time dessert is through, BJ is onto a description of the motorcycle gang that keeps ripping through their neighborhood at one in the morning.

He sounds almost admiring as he says, "We're talking Harley-Davidsons, fifty horsepower; we're talking leather jackets—

"He's talking. I'm not listening," says Hawkeye, gathering up the plates.

Helen sighs and puts her chin into her hands. "Boy, you're making me nostalgic for my motorcycle days."

BJ's whole face lights up. "No kidding! What did you ride?"

"Oy," Hawkeye mumbles as he heads into the kitchen. "Another nut."

Helen's smile looks like it's going to jump off her face. "A black FL Knucklehead. Nothing lately, though; no place to keep it in this city. You?"

"That's beautiful. I've got a BMW R51 myself." This must be something good, because they both lean across the table and start gushing away about link spring suspensions and flathead engines and compression ratios.

Margaret sweeps the rest of the silverware up and joins Hawkeye at the kitchen sink. They roll their eyes in unison as Helen and BJ wander in, still chatting about motorcycles, giving each other exasperated looks in companionable silence. Neither of them is really paying attention until Margaret hears Helen say, "You know, I've been thinking about getting a bike again. Maybe I'll use my bridge winnings."

"A bike!" Margaret whips around, aghast. "Do you know how dangerous those things are?" Neither Helen or BJ seems to hear her; they're happily discussing how all mechanics are hell-bent on ripping people off. She rounds on Hawkeye. "If Helen becomes an organ donor, it'll be all your fault."

"Me! How is this my fault?"

"If you hadn't invited us over for dinner, BJ never would have brought up the motorcycles, and then Helen never would have started talking about getting one!" She dries the plates furiously as she talks.

"Hey, don't blame me for her mid-life bike cravings! It's probably just— I don't know, early-onset menopause or something."

"Hawkeye Pierce, you're a real chauvinist."

"A— oh, that's rich, coming from you."

"From me—! I've never been so insulted in my life!"

"Really? You should try it sometime, it's fun." At some point they turn around and find that Helen and BJ have disappeared.

They're sitting on the floor of the garage, grease all over their hands. Helen is elbow-deep in BJ's blue bike, mumbling something about a frozen link in the chain.

"Hey, there you are," says BJ happily. "We were wondering when you were going to join us."

Helen smiles too. "You want to come see?"

Hawkeye scoffs and Margaret rolls her eyes and says, "No," but she finds herself approaching the bike until she's standing in between Helen and BJ. Helen's eyes narrow with amusement and she looks entirely too smug, so Margaret scowls and says, "You've got stuff on your forehead." She licks her thumb and rubs it away.

"So you did want to see." Still too smug.

"No, I most certainly did not. I wanted to have a clean bridge partner."

Helen gives BJ a wry smile. "Well, I know when I'm licked." BJ thinks this is very funny.

"My god," Hawkeye mumbles, glaring at BJ. "You two are a match made in heaven. Maybe we ought to switch partners."

"Absolutely not," Margaret sniffs. "I wouldn't trade Helen for you in a million years. We're going to lick you."

Hawkeye breaks his glare to leer at her. "Really? Should I get whipped cream?"

"Degenerate. We'll see who's grinning when Helen and I go to Tahiti on your dime."

"I've always been a fan of Paris myself," Helen adds before they can really get going, rising and wiping her hands on a rag.

"Very confident, Whitfield."

"I've earned the right to be, Pierce. I've bled more people dry than most graduates of Harvard Law." She tosses the rag in her hands to BJ. "Any last words before the funeral, Hunnicutt?" Hawkeye snorts but BJ just smiles sweetly and says: "We'll see." Margaret suddenly has the feeling that BJ is much more competitive than he looks.

In the end, Margaret and Helen win by a mile. Hawkeye pretends to get angry enough to throw them out of the house, but they keep laughing as he screams "TAKE THE SOFA WITH YOU! I'LL NEVER BE ABLE TO PAY!"

Just as they're about to drive off, Hawkeye runs onto the front step and yells that Margaret's forgotten her sweater (although she could have sworn that she didn't bring a sweater tonight). She hops out and hisses, "What the hell is this?"

He glances behind her to the car, where Helen is sitting patiently in the passenger seat. "This is BJ's idea. Anyway, this plan was a success." He grins and waggles his eyebrows. "She was giving you some serious looks, if you know what I mean."

She sighs. "I'm going home."

"Okay, wait, wait." He grabs her elbow, suddenly serious. "She likes you, that much is clear. But she's not going to wait forever. You know what I mean?"

"Yes. I wish I didn't."

"Tough shit." He hugs her quickly. "Hurry along now, and don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"I wouldn't want to do anything that you do."

August passes and passes, and mostly it's made up of moments in which Margaret's tongue gets stuck and her Houlihan willpower fails. Thinks maybe— Helen left her arm there a little too long, sat a little too close, smiled a little too gently— but she doesn't say it.

*******

In the end, it's a Friday afternoon, and they've both got the rest of the day off. They're washing their lunch dishes at Margaret's kitchen sink, complaining about uppity new nurses who think that fashion is more important than saving lives.

"Huh! That girl is so stuck up, she'd drown in a rainstorm," scoffs Helen as she dries the forks. "I've half a mind to—" she stops abruptly and switches to a whisper. "Margaret."

"What?"

"Look, a butterfly!" She looks up— there it is, hovering above the window box of lantanas that BJ gave her as a housewarming present, wings shining black and blue.

"I wonder what kind it is," Margaret murmurs.

"It's got orange spots, that mean anything to you?"

"Chanel 1934, spring collection, I think." She feels rather than saw Helen's answering smile. It feels like a dream, like she's been waiting her whole life to stand at Helen's side at the kitchen sink of her little apartment, in the clear afternoon light of early September, Margaret washing and Helen with a towel slung over her shoulder, watching a butterfly at the window. They stand there together for what feels like a long time.

 _Haven't I been waiting?_ Margaret thinks. _Haven't I been waiting my whole life for this moment? Doesn't it have to be now?_

The butterfly flaps its wings once, then the wind carries it up and away. Still, they don't move.

"I guess," Helen says at last, still very quiet like she doesn't want to ruin the moment, "we'll have to go shopping soon."

"What for?" Inside, Margaret is as still as the sea. She doesn't dare look over at Helen; she might lose her will to speak.

"For when your divorce comes through, silly. Then you can get back out on the town. Find a new man. One with two eyebrows."

"I'm not so sure I want a man," Margaret says equally quietly. She is very calm now. She sends a final prayer to whoever might be listening that Helen understands what she's trying to say.

Helen stills beside her. The sun, the tap running, the squeak of dishtowel on plates. "No?"

"No."

Helen reaches around Margaret to set a plate on the counter beside her— she's just run out of space next to her, Margaret thinks. But instead of retracting her arm, she winds it tentatively around Margaret's waist. Steps a little closer, just behind her. Wraps her other arm around Margaret's waist too.

In the hush of the kitchen, Margaret's answering sigh is audible as she relaxes to lean back against Helen. There is no orchestra, no sinkhole, no screaming generals bursting out of closets to accuse them of immoral behavior, no world outside the light and the tap still running and Helen breathing against her back as Margaret's hands reach up to rest on Helen's forearms.

"I've wanted to do this for a long time," Helen murmurs.

"Me too."

She feels Helen's voice moving through her own body when she responds: "So why didn't you?"

"I didn't think you'd ever let me."

Helen lets go and they turn to face each other. She brushes a little hair out of Margaret's eyes, and leans in— but Margaret stops her.

"Wait," Margaret says. Helen freezes— fear, sadness, hurt— then they're tucked away and her face is blank.

"I—" Margaret doesn't let her get any further, just takes the towel off Helen's shoulders and starts drying her own hands, then takes Helen's between her own.

"Our hands are damp," Margaret says by way of explanation as she rubs Helen's hands dry. "I don't want to get your hair wet."

Helen makes a noise that sounds _motherofgod_ and leans forward to bury her face into the corner of Margaret's neck. "Houlihan, you nearly gave me a heart attack."

"I'm sorry!" But they're both laughing a little.

"You're not."

"Alright, so I'm not. Sue me." Helen laughs into her shoulder; Margaret rubs her back gently, still feeling like this can't all be real.

"Hey, Major."

"Yes, Whitfield." Margaret tries not to sound undone by just standing and breathing Helen in.

"That's a pretty cool response for someone whose heart is going so fast."

"What would you know about it?"

"I can feel it."

"Oh." So much for playing it cool. Margaret can't feel her own heartbeat at all. She can't really feel her body except for the places where it's touching Helen's. "Is yours?"

Helen straightens up to look at her. "What?"

Margaret reaches out as though to take Helen's carotid pulse, but they're already leaning in as she repeats, "Is yours?" and the words don't even sound like hers, they must be some half-remembered dream; and then they're kissing exactly like she imagined it and there's no space to think about voices and dreams and pulses.

It's a little messy, the angle isn't perfect; it's quick, and new, and hungry; and when Margaret distantly tries to think about the situation she registers only a floating sensation that isn't quite exhilaration and isn't quite relief.

They kiss until one or the other (it's impossible to tell who) starts laughing and they pull away. ( _Lord, what's wrong with us?_ says Helen as she tosses her head back in laughter. _God only knows,_ says Margaret and still smiling, kisses Helen's throat.) They laugh until they want to kiss again.

"Why didn't we do this before?" Margaret's smile hurts a little.

"I didn't think you'd let me," says Helen, and kisses the base of her throat. _I would,_ she thinks. _Yes, I would have._ She must have spoken aloud, because Helen pulls back, hair a little mussed, lips red and swollen. "Would you?"

"Yes," she says again, deliberately. "Yes, yes." The thing in her chest— which must be happiness at last— sits in her chest, warm and breathless.

Mostly things don't change. They keep their own apartments. They see each other on weekends (but rack up astronomical phone bills). They talk about work and dogs and bridge and mutual friends. They shower separately— years of army life have made them value the privacy of the bathroom.

"We need our independence," Margaret says.

"We're used to being alone," Helen replies, ever better at calling a thing by its name. "We've got to take things slowly or it'll be too much."

"Yes." A pause. "Helen, I don't want you to get bored."

"Bored of what?"

"Waiting, you know. For me to be less…"

"Less of yourself?"

Another pause. "I just mean you could have any woman in San Francisco if you really wanted."

"I don't really want."

"Be serious."

"I am. You're my best friend and I've loved you for years and that's all there is to it."

"It can't be that simple."

"Why not?"

"I just don't think it can. What if it falls apart? What if…"

"If?"

"What if we're doing it _wrong?_ I've never done— _this_ before, with a woman, and neither have you, and we don't know what we're doing! Aren't we supposed to be— taking things slowly? Being cautious?"

"Margaret." Helen throws her arms up. "You ripped a button off my blue blouse with your teeth. We've spent the last five hours in bed. There's nothing very slow about this. And anyway—" she rolls over to face Margaret. "Not knowing what to do is no excuse for not trying. Okay, we've got our problems— we can't pretend we don't— but I know yours already and you know mine, so that's the hardest part out of the way. Now if we try to make some kind of life, have some kind of happiness together, and it all goes to hell— then at least we know we did what we could. But if it doesn't, if it works…" Margaret traces the downy lines of the hair on Helen's arm.

"We could do it." She looks up at Helen. "Right?"

Her face is half in shadow, but Margaret thinks she's about to smile. "You tell me."

"We could do it," she repeats firmly. "We want to. Good or bad, we want each other enough to give it a go."

"That's it," Helen says and reaches for her. "Keep telling me." And she does, and eventually there's no more need for words.

The next morning, Margaret gets up early to take the dog out, but instead of climbing back into bed, she finds herself sitting at the kitchen table, staring out the window and drinking coffee, wondering if God is real. Maybe he isn't, she thinks, not after the war. She wonders if there's a prayer to say to make happiness last. Helen would know about that kind of thing— a noise behind her.

There's Helen in the doorway, as though she knew what Margaret was thinking, smiling tiredly and scrubbing at her temples.

 _Come here,_ she tries to say, only it comes out as "Hello."

"Hello to you too," says Helen, and comes to stand behind her at the table. She rests one hand on the back of Margaret's head. She looks down at the newspaper, but Margaret can tell there's something she wants.

She looks up. "What is it?"

Helen just shakes her head. "Nothing."

"Don't bullshit me."

Helen smiles faintly. "Sorry. I've never—" she stops.

"Helen?"

"I've never been with anyone I didn't bullshit." She pauses again. This is a confession, an admission of something. "But then, I've never been with you."

"You can't with me."

"Why would I bother? You'd see right through me like always." She doesn't sound bitter, just matter-of-fact. Margaret nods.

"So what was it you wanted to say to me?"

Helen is quiet for a minute. She sounds almost surprised when she says, "I think that was it."

"Really?"

"Yeah." Leaves blow past the window. Oliver twitches on his bed in the kitchen. San Francisco stretches its limbs and starts to come awake. "You coming back to bed?"

"It's seven-fifteen."

"Sure," says Helen, gently taking the empty mug from Margaret's hands and placing it in the sink. "But it's Saturday."

"Hmm. You make a compelling argument." Margaret rises, winds her fingers into Helen's bathrobe. "Maybe you should quit nursing and become a lawyer."

Helen throws her head back and laughs. "BJ and Hawkeye would starve."

*******

It isn't perfect, of course. They fight as they always have. Helen would always rather try and fix a problem on her own instead of asking for help, so she waits until it's almost too late and it's blowing up in her face. Margaret is stubborn and is used to getting her way all the time; she's still terrified that the feeling is going to pass and leave her empty and alone. One day they start arguing about whether or not to call a TV repairman, and half an hour later they're in the middle of a terrific blow-out about how exactly they plan on keeping up appearances.

But the thing about falling in love with Helen is that Margaret already knows her, knew what she was getting into. The thing about Helen is that she's just as stubborn as Margaret, and for some insane, unfathomable reason, she wants Margaret back.

"We've got to try," Margaret says softly when she's exhausted all cruelty and fear of failure. She leans against the green-tiled wall, watching the side of Helen's face where she's seated at the kitchen table.

There's a long pause before Helen looks across at her. Margaret looks back, bracing herself for lingering anger and disappointment— but finds only something that looks like relief mixed with exhaustion, and Helen doesn't try to hide it. "I suppose we do," she says, and rises to take Margaret into her arms.

And somehow love becomes little things: Helen's ankle pressed against her in the night. Long arguments over the best way to cook a turkey. Giants games. Adjusting the curlers in each other's hair. Paring apples to eat in bed as they each work through their own pile of bills. There was a time, she remembers, when love was sudden engagements or quick weekends away or expensive presents from a mail-order catalogue.

On the whole, she likes this version of love better.

The divorce comes through at the end of October, on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday. She comes home on Wednesday to an apartment full of people: Hawkeye and BJ (in a cowboy hat and misshapen boater respectively); Sheila Anderson and her two small sons, running around with Erin and blowing party horns; Peg and Yvette, looking totally unfazed by the chaos; and of course Helen.

There's screaming and laughing and confetti made of shredded legal documents that Oliver tries to eat from the air. Peg hugs her hello and congratulates her profusely on her liberation; Yvette shakes her hand and pronounces the divorce a victory for women everywhere. It's not a big party, but Margaret is overjoyed. She's catching up with Sheila when BJ tugs at her sleeve and asks her to come into the kitchen. There on the counter is a beautiful white cake, which has clearly been made by a professional because Hawkeye's projects are never that symmetrical. On top it's iced, in swirling green frosting: WE LOVE YOU MARGARET!

Below that, in smaller, messier pink letters, slightly crooked: SCREW THE SNOT!

BJ gives her a big, goofy grin. "You like the touch at the bottom? Yvette said it was a little lopsided, but I thought it added panache."

"Oh, you," she says, and bursts into tears. BJ immediately gathers her into his arms and yells for Hawkeye, who takes one look at her and in turn yells for Helen.

"Oh, Lord," says Helen, moving around the table and taking her from BJ. "What's the matter?" She strokes her hair.

"The stupid cake!"

"Hey, we worked hard on that," says BJ, digging around for a tissue.

"No, no, the cake's not stupid— it's just that it's really over now— and I'm crying at my own party, and I f— I hate crying!"

She feels Helen tense a little. Pulls back, wipes her face with a dish towel. "Yes, it's over." She searches Margaret's face. "Is that— are you upset about that?" She glances over at Hawkeye as though for reassurance.

"No. Only that—" she rests her cheek on Helen's shoulder. "Only that we wasted so much time."

Sometimes she wakes to find Helen in her bed and thinks it's an old dream come back to haunt her, and gets a little thrill every time she remembers that this is her life, that she can wake Helen up by crawling on top of her, that they can have coffee and slightly burned toast and kisses any day they want.

She rolls over onto her side to look at Helen, still asleep. A few strands of her hair glint gray in the early morning half-light. Her mouth is slightly open, and she's wearing one of Margaret's old shirts with a hole in the collar. Margaret is madly in love with her. She lies there sleepily, wanting to remember everything, to tug her happiness around her like a blanket so she can be warm forever—

Just then Helen shifts towards her in her sleep, stretches her hand out a little. Something in Margaret stirs at this, unfurls itself, and she moves closer to touch Helen's hand with her own. Just a brush of fingers, but it's enough. And maybe she's dreaming, or just seeking warmth, but Helen sighs in her sleep and curls towards Margaret.

Margaret closes her eyes and drinks in the smell of Helen's hair and the warmth of her body and the press of their ankles under the covers, filled with heavy, sweet contentment.

Maybe the moment will pass. No matter, she thinks as she begins to drift into sleep, Helen's breath warm against her neck. They will have many more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See the epilogue (chapter 7) for the full end notes :)


	7. December 1959

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> December 1959. Three years later.

No matter the time of night or day, Helen wakes up when Margaret gets out of bed. "Bad dream?" Helen murmurs groggily into the darkness.

"No, no. My back's killing me."

"You want aspirin?"

"No, I'll get it."

When she returns from the bathroom, Helen is propped up on her elbow, half-smiling. "Wipe that grin off your face," Margaret grumbles.

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Oh yes you do, Helen Whitfield. You're laughing at my misery." Margaret does her best to climb into bed with irritation, but Helen just lifts her arm so that Margaret can curl up closer to her.

"Honey, I'm not laughing at your pain, I swear. But you have to admit, the Brownie Incident was a little funny." It's been over a week and Helen is still laughing. Margaret and Hawkeye had gotten a little carried away making fun of professional football players at Thanksgiving after each indulging in one of Hayden's Finest Special Brownies after the meal. What started as a mock slide tackle ended with both of them thrashing around on the floor, BJ laughing so hard he cried, and Yvette pouring a bowl of cold water on their heads and sending them out to the porch swing. They had promptly fallen asleep on each other, only to wake two hours later with sore necks and sorer backs. Come to think of it, maybe the swing was partially responsible for her back pain. Margaret makes a mental note to yell at Hawkeye about it.

"We do not speak of that day," she says primly, tucking her now-cold feet under Helen's calves.

"Uh-huh," Helen says, but rests her hand on the back of Margaret's head. They lie like that for a few minutes in peaceful silence. Helen's breathing is starting to even out again when Margaret speaks.

"Helen?"

"Yeah."

"Did you check the pressure on the bike tires?"

"Aw, hell. I forgot."

"Promise me you'll check before we go tomorrow morning."

"Of course I will."

"I'm not going to die in a bike accident for something stupid like a lack of tire pressure."

"You'll die because you distracted me while driving. Go to sleep." Helen strokes her hair soothingly.

"Alright." Margaret lasts about a minute before she breaks the silence again.

"Helen."

She moans, but she's half-laughing. "Oh Lord."

"Helen, stop that. Now listen. What would you think if I cut my hair?"

Helen shifts to sit up, weight propped onto her elbow, and looks down at Margaret.

"All of it?"

"Yes."

She reaches out, brushes hair out of Margaret's eyes. It's three years they've been together, two since they've shared a house. Sometimes they argue. Mostly they eat butter beans and take the dogs for long walks by the bay and reach for each other in the night. Their life is calm, and yet some little part of Margaret is nervous as she waits for Helen to respond.

At last, at last, Helen's face breaks into a grin. "I think you'd look very sexy with short hair."

It feels like her entire body is exhaling. Margaret smiles back; she can't help it. "You think so?"

"Bet you all I'm worth and half my life. You want me to cut it?"

At that, Margaret leans up and kisses her. She can feel Helen's mouth curving into a smile.

"In the morning."

"Okay. But with plans like those, we need rest. Sleep now." Helen gently guides her back down so she can put her head in the crook of Margaret's neck, and tugs the covers over them. "Tomorrow I'll buzz your head."

"Not that short."

"Okay, not that short. But tomorrow."

"Tomorrow."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so, so much for reading. Thanks especially to anyone who followed this from its early days and anyone who ever left a comment on this— you have no idea how much it means to me. I love these idiots and sharing that love with you all! Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated-- let me know what you thought in the comments! Come say hi and ask me about the next project @raksheshi on tumblr.


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